Keyhole

[tamas]

www.keyhole.com (http://www.keyhole.com)

Have you guys seen this software? They were just bought by Google.
It is a slick earth viewer with detailed sattelite/aerial images all around the globe. (default resolution 1km/pixel, several areas 1-2ft/pixel, some places up to 3"/pixel)
You have to try it to see how cool it is.

I can imagine renderings for future clients with views showing surrounding area from this database.
(I attached a .kml file with a view of Mt. Helens. You need the keyhole software to view it though.)

[Kroke]

Yes, we used this technology in an architectural video my roommate and I made. You can see it used if you download the animation under "video tour" link on the left @ www.themeridian.biz . It really is sweet software...

[Scott D Davis]

To bring this back to the top:

I've been playing with Keyhole, and this is awesome! It has the ability to find an aerial photo of any address, and then you can 'tilt' the ground plane and read the topopgraphy. You can then spin around the location, 360 degrees.

Then you can import your own images, and overlay them over the aerial! We have been taking our site plans, making a JPG, then laying them over the aerial photo. These locations and images can all be saved and catagorized.

Beyon that, it has a ton of 'locations' built in. Want to find all the coffee houses in the area? Turn them on. Since we do a ton of schools, we like the fact that school district boundaries are already included, as well as markers for all schools.

Here's an image I like: Hoover Dam at Lake Mead

[J. Grouchy]

It is a shame that many (most) areas are much lower resolution...particularly when the project you are working on is just outside a higher res area. But I shouldn't complain - a few years ago you either had to pray that terraserver had a fairly recent image of your exact site (almost 0% chance of that!) or hire an aerial photographer if you wanted anything more than a line drawing for the site.
For a VERY brief period Mapquest had a tabbed option for viewing the aerial photo of the address you looked up...but this disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared. Shame...

[MikeJarosz]

It is a shame that many (most) areas are much lower resolution...particularly when the project you are working on is just outside a higher res area.

I downloaded the trial professional version. It is pretty amazing, as long as the place you are interested in is well documented by satellite observation. Hoover Dam is out there, and I found the Coleseum in Rome pretty quickly. But the real reason I needed it, an aerial view of Kazakhstan, there was very little information available. Amazingly, next door in Afganistan, there was a ton of info. Let me guess why......

[LRaiz]

I think that Kazakhstan may still have a few ICBMs and I imagine they (and their north neighbor) would not like to see topography of silos freely available.

[Simon.Whitbread]

Haven't looked yet, but is there a street plan for Area 51?

[J. Grouchy]

I don't have it on this computer...but i think there actually is a pre-set view for Area 51 as well as many other popular landmarks (i.e. Grand Canyon, etc.)