[HN Gopher] Buy Hi-Resolution Satellite Images of Any Place on E...
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Buy Hi-Resolution Satellite Images of Any Place on Earth
Author : for_i_in_range
Score : 324 points
Date : 2023-01-21 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.skyfi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.skyfi.com)
| technological wrote:
| What is the usecase for common man ? I cannot think of anything,
| so asking to understand how one will use it.
|
| Thanks and awesome website
| [deleted]
| kickout wrote:
| Very cool. Always interested in these hi-res photos for
| agricultural field monitoring. A little pricey though.
|
| ETA: 5 sq km seems big for a minimum. Multispectral availability
| is super cool tho!
| mckeed wrote:
| Cool, I was wondering if this would be useful for farmers.
| Could you share more info on how multispectral images would be
| used?
| lukefischer wrote:
| Well with SAR you can get moisture content of soil which can
| help with crop yields. Right now third parties do this for ag
| work but our goal is to have integrated analytics cause
| really a farmer doesn't care about the imagery he or she
| cares about crop yields...that's what we are solving for.
| aliljet wrote:
| I've long wondered why we couldn't start collecting pure drone
| footage for this kind of data. Literally decentralize the
| collection of overhead imagery.
| kbaker wrote:
| https://openaerialmap.org/ exists!
| aliljet wrote:
| Wait, how can I start sending my drone footage to them? This
| is cool?
| lukefischer wrote:
| We have a couple drone partners...I'm a big drone fan (ran
| the experiment while at Uber Elevate) and want to have
| every drone hobbyist be able to upload their data and get
| paid (probably a small chunk but size based) as long as it
| can be geo rectified
| lukefischer wrote:
| It's on our roadmap. Imagery and data from all sources
| heliodor wrote:
| I picked an area. The preview low-res image seems to indicate
| that they are happy to sell me pictures of clouds!
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| That's just the part of the equation when using electro-optical
| imagery. You're paying to task a satellite, not necessarily a
| clear picture. To me this will be an interesting test for
| SkyFi. Casual customers just expect to see the ground when they
| "buy an image" and giving them clouds will put them off from
| using the service further.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You can select maximum cloud cover in the resulting image,
| over a month long imaging window. They predict cloud cover to
| task satellites. It's kind of the dual problem to "get me and
| image on this date"
| heliodor wrote:
| I understand that for new images but for existing images I
| expect them to stack multiple images into a cloud-free image,
| just like Google Maps does. Otherwise, at least calculate the
| cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally.
| thfuran wrote:
| >at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the
| money proportionally.
|
| That makes sense if you can figure out how to get food to
| duplicate their satellites.
| lukefischer wrote:
| Really depends on the use cases but I understand. You can
| adjust cloud settings in the advanced tab, by default its
| 20%. You could go down to 0%. We won't charge you if the
| clouds are above what you specify.
| lukefischer wrote:
| When we get more supply there will be more options. Just
| getting started here.
| [deleted]
| aendruk wrote:
| Does this allow me to use purchased images as a reference for
| OpenStreetMap contributions? Or even better, donate them to
| OpenStreetMap for other contributors to reference?
|
| Occasionally the available imagery around important features is
| too outdated (e.g. completed construction of public
| infrastructure) and I'd love to be able to fund a prioritized
| update.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I read elsewhere in the thread that the license allows
| basically anything, provided that you aren't making money and
| that you give credit. The latter is the hard part. Would a
| source=... tag on the object be enough? Or does anyone using
| that part of the OSM map need to be made aware that this
| contains data based on skyfi? There are no methods currently
| for doing the latter.
| lesquivemeau wrote:
| Is it just me or is the "very high res" sample less detailled
| than the preview on the map ?
| denlekke wrote:
| 48 hours from new image capture to being able to download it.
| didn't see info on the time between requesting a new image and
| how soon it can be captured
| lukefischer wrote:
| We aim to be faster. It'll increase with more supply
| nly wrote:
| The "high resolution" 50cm option wasn't even available in my
| area of the UK. Lame.
| lukefischer wrote:
| This is our first entry to the market, agree it's not ideal you
| can't get it but working on amping up supply as quick as we
| can.
| jofer wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that the pricing isn't that unique.
| That's pretty normal for a list price. $7 sq km + 25 sq km min
| (basically the size of the image).
|
| That's probably because they're (I think?) buying tasking
| capacity from other companies, so the pricing can't be below the
| rate they negotiate. That probably results in then negotiating a
| below list price from a few companies and then setting prices
| that wind up being close to the average list price for the
| industry.
|
| The difference is two very key things: 1) no minimum overall buy
| 2) fully public pricing
|
| That price is pretty normal, but usually you have to commit to at
| least a few thousand dollars worth. 25 sq km min per target is
| also pretty normal, but the contracts usually require you
| committing to at least a few hundred of those.
|
| Next is public list pricing. Every company has list pricing, and
| that's basically what smaller customers will pay. Large customers
| negotiate it down, of course. But just explicitly advertising the
| list pricing is also a big deal and not normally done. It's
| usually way too hidden.
|
| A lot of folks (hi there Joe) have been pushing for more
| transparency in pricing, and a lot of companies have been talking
| about chasing the "long tail" of small customers for a long time,
| but it's really good to see someone actually doing it.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It is! So many people (both potential large customers and that
| long tail of small customers) will not click "contact a sales
| associate" and just leave when you won't say how much a thing
| costs.
|
| Even just a ballpark is helpful. As an industrial engineer, I
| deal with this all the time - I don't have time to go to lunch
| with you and talk about one of 300 components on my machine,
| but is your fancy gizmo worth it? When the tech specs are
| public PDFs, that's great, when they're locked behind an
| account creation email flow to spam me later, that sucks (and
| you'll get a company disposable email), when the account
| doesn't get created until your sales rep looks at my company
| website to estimate how much money you can take us for, it's
| too late; I've already designed in something else. And what's
| the price difference between the standard and deluxe models? Is
| it 20%, or a factor of 3? If your product is moderately
| compelling but has public pricing, you're in the running, if I
| have to wait for a quote you'd better be really compelling.
|
| I might be one of those long tail customers for SkyFi, my Dad's
| birthday is coming up and I think he'd love a print of a
| satellite photo of his cottage on the lake up north...it needs
| to be better than Google Maps, but I'd never make it through a
| manual sales pipeline.
| roamerz wrote:
| This. I evaluate lots of software in my position. If you
| don't post at least ballpark pricing on your public webpage
| and you do not have a feature I cannot live without I'm
| talking to one of your competitors that does. Every time.
| lukefischer wrote:
| 100% agree, nobody wants to contact sales so I outlawed
| that. Easy decision
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Concur. This is so obvious to me I do not understand why
| not posting a price -- no matter what it is -- is still
| considered good business practice. Perhaps once upon a time
| before the internet but no longer.
| blowski wrote:
| It's not that they have a fixed price they're not sharing
| with you. They want to estimate how much you'll pay first
| - look at Crunchbase, etc.
|
| I'm not saying it's a good idea but there are plenty of
| smart cookies who seem to think it maximises revenue.
|
| If you want to counteract, have a shitty little startup
| with no funding and ask for the quote for them.
| roamerz wrote:
| That's probably a valid point. I would liken that to car
| lots but most of them at least publicly post a starting
| price. I guess it's no wonder why I instinctively steer
| clear.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I suspect it's primarily a mix of three things. The first
| is price discrimination, like you mention. The second is
| wanting to have some control over the sales process
| (price anchoring, tempering sticker stock, etc.). The
| third is related to the second: focusing inbound sales
| efforts by subtly communicating that "if you have to ask,
| you can't afford it" for a large chunk of price-sensitive
| customers.
| lukefischer wrote:
| anytime you hear "custom quote" it means a sales person
| is try to maximize his or her value out of you
| roamerz wrote:
| When in fact the opposite should be true. How can I as a
| company maximize my value to you. This is the type of
| companies I choose to partner with.
| lukefischer wrote:
| its a backwards system and then when you combine sales
| teams that are commission based how can anyone
| realistically expect to get a fair price when a human's
| pay is based on getting as high a price as possible
| roamerz wrote:
| And the 4th is once I see those sorts of sales tactics I
| know what kind of people run that company and I am not
| interested in associating with them. Principal matters.
| blowski wrote:
| A more positive spin would be that richer companies are
| subsidising poorer ones.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yep. To me (and, I suspect, plenty of others) "call for
| pricing" = "call so one of our trained manipulators can
| figure out how to screw you out of as much money as
| possible".
| teamskyfi wrote:
| The pricing page on our website is just the start. If you
| visit the desktop or download the mobile app
| (https://www.skyfi.com/download-app), you will see that we
| have dynamic pricing in-app. As you change the size of your
| area of interest (AOI), the price immediately changes. We are
| 100% focused on the UX for the end-user and will work hard to
| keep the purchasing process seamless. User feedback like
| these conversations is helpful.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I'm not going to download and install your app to discover
| pricing either. There's a fair chance you can't get me to
| install your app ever, and the more of your service is tied
| to it, the less likely I am to use your service at all.
| int_19h wrote:
| Their website has similar functionality where you can
| highlight an area on the map and it immediately tells you
| how much the photo will cost, updating the price as you
| tweak options.
| CPLX wrote:
| > I might be one of those long tail customers for SkyFi, my
| Dad's birthday is coming up and I think he'd love a print of
| a satellite photo of his cottage on the lake up north ...it
| needs to be better than Google Maps
|
| It's not, it's drastically worse than Google Maps, not even
| comparable.
|
| That was my use case as well, I bought images (at the highest
| offered resolution) of my house upstate and the place I got
| married, thinking they'd be nice little framed items, and
| they're completely unusable.
|
| Google maps is probably 10-50x sharper. It's a confusing
| product. I guess there's a use case of tracking a something
| like how many warehouses your competitor has built, or
| avalanches, or forest fires, or all sorts of time sensitive
| things, but I feel like they could do a way better job of
| actually explaining what they are actually selling.
| [deleted]
| int_19h wrote:
| Google Maps uses aerial photos past a certain level of
| magnification, if it is available in a given area, even if
| it's still labelled as "satellite".
|
| If you compare areas where there are no such photos - e.g.
| large natural parks - the hi-res samples on their website
| don't look any worse to me than Google.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> will not click "contact a sales associate" and just leave
| when you won't say how much a thing costs.
|
| THIS!!
|
| Having run small businesses in several technology industries,
| I cannot emphasize how much this is true.
|
| I very well understand that pricing can be complex.
|
| But if you cannot give me even an order of magnitude as to
| whether your prices are even remotely feasible for me or my
| customer's project, I likely don't have the time or
| motivation to find out.
|
| Yes, I get it, you think your likelihood of sales is better
| if I talk to someone and they can pitch me on how wonderful
| your stuff is.
|
| Bullshirt. Maybe one in 500 times is that true. You are
| wasting my time and yours.
|
| And, no this is not a filter to weed out the small players.
| My small shops have done work for anything from individuals
| to the largest multinational corps and governments. If your
| product is a fit, I can get the budget. But putting in that
| kind of wall is just offputting.
|
| This is very much like how the real estate industry used to
| treat the address of a property as a state secret, as if
| nothing is ever a 'drive-by', the sale will be lost if they
| can't talk with the customer, blah, blah, blah. Then the dam
| finally broke, and now they all put addresses and maps, and
| guess what? They save themselves tons of time because the
| buyers self-qualify! They check out the places themselves,
| and only call when it already looks like a good fit.
|
| Sales and marketing types really can get stuck in naive wrong
| ideas for decades...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > It is! So many people (both potential large customers and
| that long tail of small customers) will not click "contact a
| sales associate" and just leave when you won't say how much a
| thing costs.
|
| Yes! Especially since 'contact us' can usually be translated
| as 'not financially viable for a private person' (or even
| small company).
|
| Even if pricing is not easy to say (like for companies doing
| custom car mods etc.), at least a rough idea or example
| projects with their costs help to know whether you could
| reasonably afford something.
| Gemoto wrote:
| My team has 7 people and my company has 100.000 employees.
|
| My budget as that single team is not 'just getting the
| company credit card out and paying 5k / year for some
| services I wanna use'.
|
| I'm pretty sure this type of practice is just stupid and we
| do see how much easier it is to just be allowed to click a
| VM on was, gcp and co in comparison to all of these
| 'contactnus for pricing shit'.
| teamskyfi wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you'd like to see?
| jjeaff wrote:
| Not op, but I'm sure, like many people, are saying they
| would like to see advertised, upfront pricing.
| rmason wrote:
| I started out doing aerial infrared photography for farmers in
| 1983 when it meant storing film in the refrigerator and renting
| a Cessna. Then in the nineties I moved on to buying satellite
| photos.
|
| But there was a fundamental disconnect between how a fertilizer
| company wanted to buy photos and how the satellite company
| wanted to sell them. We ideally wanted to buy them by the
| field, the section or township at worst. The satellite company
| wanted to sell you a 'scene' which was 10-12 counties. Most
| farmers trying technology as a test would give you 5-10% of
| their acreage. Try telling your boss you wanted to buy photos
| where you weren't going to use 99%+ of them.
|
| Then to make it worse here in Michigan it is quite cloudy. You
| get your photos and 50-60% of them are ruined by cloud cover.
| When it worked the photos were a godsend. Getting three or four
| flyovers a season allowed you to spot trends as well.
|
| I personally think drones will win the ag market. What I wanted
| to do back in the nineties was launch a drone from the county
| airport and have it automatically fly to a given set of gps
| coordinates and return at nighttime. Cost is lower, I don't
| have to buy any extra photos that I don't want and because its
| below the clouds all the photos are useable.
|
| But back then the technology didn't exist. But the tech has
| been there since 2010. Since 2015 its been possible to fly
| around other planes in the sky and geofence fields near
| airports. But the FAA won't grant permission, even for tests. I
| know at least two Michigan startups that went broke waiting and
| I suspect there are many more. So for now you have no choice
| but try using satellite companies. As a result the market is
| 1-2% of what it could be.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| What about balloons? Have you seen Urban Sky?
| https://www.urbansky.com
|
| (I'm not affiliated with them, fwiw)
| rmason wrote:
| Interesting idea if you aren't dealing with a heavy cloud
| cover like say Iowa or Illinois this might work. For taking
| pictures in a city this could be really useful.
|
| But if you have to stay below the cloud cover you're going
| to probably cover no more than a township(?) at a time. If
| I have to send a guy out in a pickup who launches, grabs a
| photo, pulls it back in and then drives to the next
| township it is slow and expensive.
| hammock wrote:
| > here in Michigan it is quite cloudy. You get your photos
| and 50-60% of them are ruined by cloud cover
|
| Why would an aerial photo plane fly when it's cloudy? Makes
| no sense.
|
| Edit: downvote me some more. Seems pretty clear that it would
| be important for an outfit to schedule and run flights on
| 80%+ clear days or at least days with high ceilings.. not 50%
| or less days
| jofer wrote:
| With that said, I'm still very skeptical that there's enough
| revenue in the "long tail" of small customers to make a viable
| satellite imaging company. Please prove me wrong there!
| brookst wrote:
| Hello jofer! I couldn't help noticing your red 2017 Subaru
| Crosstrek was out in your driveway all winter, and probably
| needs a spring detail. We're running a special this week!
|
| We've also identified signs of water damage on your roof,
| which was last replaced 22 years ago according to public
| records. Our local affiliate will provide a repair estimate
| free of cost, and we'll throw in a discount on the car
| detail.
| anlsh wrote:
| I think I'm going to vomit :(
| layer8 wrote:
| Don't do that outside though! You'll get ads for
| gastrointestinal medication.
| jofer wrote:
| Good luck recognizing that level of detail! This isn't that
| type of imagery. You can tell just barely tell a truck from
| a car and can definitely tell the color of the vehicle, but
| that's about it. You're describing 1cm imagery from drones,
| not satellite imagery.
|
| Regardless, insurance companies are big customers for
| similar reasons. Recognizing swimming pools in imagery is
| tougher than you'd think, but a classic thing (and real)
| that gets brought up is your insurance company raising your
| rates because you put in a pool and didn't tell them.
| Insurance companies would love to (and sometimes do) detect
| that from satellite imagery instead of boots on the ground.
|
| Either way, those are big companies / big contracts, rather
| than individuals buying imagery directly.
| GasTrader wrote:
| Actually the roof example can be done at scale cheap
| enough for a local contractor to market. I'd use
| hyperspectral but 30 cm optical might work in sure 10cm
| would. Thanks for the suggestion!
| heliodor wrote:
| In Puerto Rico, roofs are flat and get dirty within a few
| months. You absolutely can easily determine when it was
| last powerwashed as well as when it was last sealed.
|
| Sealing will leave you with a pure white roof for about a
| month or two. Powerwashing will leave you will light to
| medium gray. They'll turn dark gray to black within a few
| months in the parts where the water pools.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| It's different for dyed sealant, but there is a time
| while the work is being done where old sections are
| stripped back and the new material is drying. Lots of
| false positives from HVAC work etc. though.
| lukefischer wrote:
| A frequent comment we get is "there's no consumer market
| cause it's been tried before"...false. Of course there has
| not been a consumer adoption because you have to buy huge
| chunks of earth, enter a contract for 5-6 figures, and the
| whole process takes months and months. Previous business
| model before we started was like Uber saying, "contact sales
| if you want a ride and they'll get you a custom quote for the
| year with a minimum price of $10,000". Uber would've lasted a
| couple weeks with that mindset. So why has the EO industry
| persisted, cause there has been no other options and the Govt
| has been the largest spender.
| lukefischer wrote:
| we are STARTING with satellite imagery. drones, airplanes,
| stratospheric balloons are all in our partnerships. also
| partnering with analytic companies.
| hammock wrote:
| I want ultra high res for art. Can't wait
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Depending on what you consider "viable", there's the
| potential for a few hundred every couple months from
| archaeologists (I used to be one). Every working
| archaeologist needs high resolution imagery as cheaply as
| possible on a fairly regular basis.
| jofer wrote:
| Oh, agreed! There's definitely a market there. A lot of my
| friends are archaeologists (I'm a geologist), and I've
| heard many stories of "if only I could get your company to
| sell me imagery instead of blowing me off because we can't
| buy enough". Similarly, my mom was a mine inspector for
| years (mostly open gravel pits). This sort of imagery would
| have saved her state department a ton in travel costs, as
| most of the "boots on the ground" checks were "did a ton of
| gravel make it into the creek downstream after that big
| rain". You still have to go out there for water
| samples/etc, but just getting up to date info on large
| scale runoff is huge, as you can get out there before the
| mine can hide the event or claim it didn't come from them.
|
| The issue, historically, is that these cases didn't make
| for large enough contracts for an imaging company to work
| with. Would you rather chase one $2 billion contract or
| 1000 $1000 contracts? (No, the amounts aren't the same
| either -- that's the point.)
|
| It's not that the demand isn't there, it's that most
| companies focus exclusively on the very large contracts, as
| they're more lucrative.
| teamskyfi wrote:
| SkyFi team here. We did fight hard to make the minimum size of
| the image lower than current industry standards. Many use cases
| don't need large swaths and it helps bring down the minimum
| price - making it more accessible. We also have one individual
| EULA for all of our data providers which is not currently
| standard for the industry. We are working on leading the Earth
| observation industry towards transparent pricing. It makes it a
| lot easier for the customer, which is our primary focus.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It is pretty cool and I was looking for a picture of my
| grandparents place as a gift they wouldn't buy since they
| don't know it can be made, but the mininum 5k area neglects
| that purpose. They aren't technical at all, but the idea that
| something so advanced as a satellite could take a picture of
| their house would blow their minds.
|
| I completely understand if my request is impossible, but at
| least one other commenter mentioned this idea in the thread,
| and I think it would be a pretty common thing.
|
| One other point. Would it be possible to subscribe to an area
| and get notified when photos become available?
|
| Actually a final point: on the website it mentions the
| technical resolution of the images. Could you have one
| example of each size photo that I can see? 500cm doesn't
| really mean anything to me, nor does multispectural.
| GasTrader wrote:
| An existing image that is recent may cost 20 to 30 bucks at
| 5sqkm. Perhaps that would work. Existing images might only
| be a week old.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Why is the 5 sqkm min area a problem? If you're getting 1
| px per meter, it doesn't matter how much irrelevant area
| gets captured around your area of interest (and existing
| imagery prices are low enough that it shouldn't be a
| problem).
|
| That said, I suspect Google Maps and other public mapping
| services likely already have higher resolution pictures.
| Like you said, I also can't really imagine much under the
| "100 cm" description, but zooming in on a random place of
| middle-of-nowhere, Alaska, I can clearly make out the
| triangular shape of tree shadows that measure around 6
| meters length-wise, so I assume the resolution is better
| than "100 cm". Middle-of-nowhere Siberia was worse, but in
| a random 360 people village I could clearly distinguish
| left and right tire tracks.
|
| I only see very few benefits a service selling historical
| pictures would provide for curiosity/novelty/hobbyist use
| cases - specific times (including newer imagery) that
| aren't available in the Google Earth history, getting the
| picture officially and without watermarks rather than
| having to screenshot or otherwise extract it, and maybe
| some edge cases in terms of areas covered.
|
| Being able to request a _new_ picture is much more
| interesting, but I suspect at the resolutions available, it
| won 't be too useful either (edit: again - for
| curiosity/novelty/hobbyist use cases, for which pricing
| will also be a big hurdle).
| amelius wrote:
| What are people using these images for? Just curious.
| lukefischer wrote:
| we could talk all day about use cases...trading, agriculture,
| real estate, insurance, curiosity, reporting, etc etc etc
| gist wrote:
| I was not able to find a way to see (prior to purchase) the age
| of the stock image (is that info on the site?). Also if you order
| a new image how do you know it will be taken when no clouds (or
| is that just obvious they only take when not obstructed (and by
| how much)?
| divvyy wrote:
| This is a horrendous privacy violation. Being able to purchase
| high resolution, newly-created images of arbitrary locations is
| way over the line of an acceptable offering. This will be used to
| stalk and harass individuals. There's no mention on their website
| of how they plan to prevent this type of intrusive surveillance
| either.
|
| Loads of people complain about the NSA's bulk data collection for
| the purposes of national security, but we barely see any
| opposition to bulk aerial surveillance imaging such as this,
| despite it being even more of a privacy breach due lack of
| safeguards around who can obtain and exploit such data.
| version_five wrote:
| Others have pointed out that this is already possible. This
| offering seems to be more targeted at small scale or personal
| use, which I think is the least concerning.
|
| Google street view already exists as well, and I can, for not
| much more than this service costs, go pretty much anywhere
| within a few thousand km and look at something.
|
| What we should be concerned about is large scale corporate uses
| of this data, which have been going on for years. For example,
| insurance companies or municipalities using satellite images to
| see if you make any changes to your property. Or license plate
| scanners for that matter.
|
| Without dwelling on it, governments and companies want to apply
| our new ability to record everything always to a system of laws
| that were written when you couldn't. Laws and rules are
| flexible in how and when they are enforced for a reason, and
| any benefit from new surveillance accrues only to the
| government or company.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
| divvyy wrote:
| That doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about services that
| launch even more of such ships.
|
| This offering is a stalker's delight. The only thing that
| would make it worse is if they paid people to turn up to a
| specified location and take photos, like some sort of Uber
| for creeps.
|
| At minimum, they should have a form where you can opt out of
| having your home included in this sold imagery. Better would
| be to notify all property owners and dwellers within a
| photographed region that the imagery has been purchased, with
| an option to opt-out. Best of all would be if everyone being
| photographed had to opt-in before a sale could be made. That
| would be a company taking privacy seriously rather than
| trying to profit from breaching it in bulk.
| heliodor wrote:
| We also have private investigators walking by the front of
| your house. This is no different.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You've always been able to hire a pilot to take photos from a
| small plane, for much of the populated earth.
|
| This isn't any different. Just cheaper and easier.
|
| Nobody has any expectation of privacy from the sky, any more
| than they do from a public street.
|
| Also, I'm not sure taking a single photo at some arbitrary time
| over the next few days is particularly useful or cost-effective
| for "stalking".
| divvyy wrote:
| That was problematic too. Making such surveillance imagery
| even more easily obtainable is even worse, especially
| considering the power of gathering multiple sets of data and
| correlating the findings. It doesn't have to be a single
| photo, a stalker could purchase multiple photos of multiple
| locations of interest on a regular basis.
|
| In terms of potential harm, it's like the difference between
| a handgun and nuclear bomb.
| GasTrader wrote:
| Hello,SkyFI founder and majority share holder. Satellite
| imagery as a stalking tool is more science fiction/ fantasy
| for a number of reasons.
|
| 1. Resolution just isn't sharp enough and never will be to
| discern individual persons identity.
|
| 2. Latency, it takes time to upload an order the order.
| Satellite has to pass iber a groundstation to receive
| command,then be in pistion to take photo then pass iver
| ground station to download. Then go to post processing, QC
| then delivery. While latency may improve ot would ne
| uneconomic and practically useless due to 1. 3. Clouds.
| Unfotunately clouds appear and would make persistent
| surveillance even if you had the resolution(you don't)
| unlikely.
|
| It's much easier and cheaper and infinitely more effective
| to use tags,ad tech on mobile phones and plain on PI for
| that type of stalking.
|
| I hope this clarifies your concerns
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't really see how this is such a serious problem.
| Again, there isn't a right to privacy from the air.
|
| And if someone wants to stalk you, it's far more cost-
| effective to hire someone to follow you physically. This
| doesn't change that. And just to be clear, I'm obviously
| not condoning stalking. Just saying this is a pretty bad
| tool for it.
|
| So I don't see anything "nuclear" about this whatsoever.
|
| (Also to be clear, the _highest_ resolution available is
| half-meter. All you can do is basically figure out whether
| a car is present somewhere and its approximate color
| _maybe_. It 's hard to establish the presence of a human at
| all, and you _certainly_ can 't tell who they are or read a
| license plate or anything even close to that.)
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I saw this linked somewhere yesterday and bought an existing
| image of my neighborhood from late last year. Resolution is 0.75
| meter. I'd describe it as notably worse than what's on Google
| Maps (which might be aerial survey), but several years more
| recent.
|
| I have no particular use for it other than curiosity, from that
| perspective it was worth $20.
| lukefischer wrote:
| really depends on the use case and for some reasons Google
| Earth is just fine
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I wonder how long until you can buy the ability to aim a
| satellite using your phone and take just the picture -- with the
| exact resolution -- that you want. Not if but when....
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the resolution is hard limited by satellite size, and there's
| no reason to aim when you can just deploy enough to cover
| everything.
| lukefischer wrote:
| kind of true but it's also orbit positioning VLEO can have
| much better image quality than LEO if comparing apples to
| apples. There is a cost and that cost is atmospheric friction
| and energy use which can degrade the satellite faster
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| What I'd like is to have this image then be uploaded in Google
| Maps' satelite layer for everyone's benefit. Or OpenStreetMap for
| that matter.
| amelius wrote:
| Copyright will prevent that from happening, I'm guessing.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| As sibling said, copyright won't let you do that. But there is
| lots of imagery already available that can be used more freely
| [0], though usually not in high resolution - enough for some
| cases, not enough for others.
|
| [0] https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ (still check
| usage conditions)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Copyright isn't supposed to apply to non-artistic images. Is
| the jurisdiction USA, do you know of caselaw that's relevant
| here? Thanks.
| alberth wrote:
| Question: what service is better than Google Earth for aerial
| images for individuals to use?
|
| Something with a resolution of 1 foot or better.
|
| I use to use https://zoom.earth/ which was ok, but their high res
| image support ends this month.
|
| Note: I'm willing to pay but don't need a corp contract from
| someone like DigitalGlobe. It's just for my on land.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| I bought a drone. It does the work fantastically, and I can
| send it up every f-ing day.
| lukefischer wrote:
| Drones are great, hard to scale and provide value to the
| masses that don't have drones though
| m348e912 wrote:
| Has anyone been able to select their highest resolution option to
| buy? Looks like its not available for unregistered users at
| least.
| rsync wrote:
| Good news / bad news ...
|
| The good news is, after overcoming confusion and annoyance about
| "launching" their website I was able to quickly and easily
| define, select and purchase an image.
|
| The _bad news_ is that I have dollar-votes that I can cast in the
| marketplace and I just _voted for a product that reshapes my
| cursor to some cutesy thing for no good reason_.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Also I have used this company to monitor things like road and
| other infrastructure construction. Images most of the planet
| daily.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs
| lukefischer wrote:
| its a great resource. more options the better with varying
| resolutions and sensor types
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly
| visible on all shared images.
|
| Can you crop the images?
|
| > nor can you sell products you create that contain the images
| themselves.
|
| Can you sell a commercial report containing the images?
|
| Can the images be published in an journal?
| version_five wrote:
| Wait, does that mean the image has watermarks on it? I was just
| contemplating ordering one of a property we have to make a
| poster. Having a watermark rules that out
| GasTrader wrote:
| Watermark will not be on image.
| lukefischer wrote:
| Biased being the CEO but just gotta say the comments are great
| and will help us better serve you all and the rest of the world
| coder543 wrote:
| Do you plan to sell off-nadir imagery too? It's one thing I
| notice that seems to be missing, and I think that can create
| some of the coolest looking satellite photos.
|
| Although, I wish your license actually allowed me to sell the
| photos if I pay for the satellite tasking. It could make for
| some cool t-shirts or something!
| lukefischer wrote:
| Off nadir is something in the roadmap. This was our first
| baby step in launching last week. It's trick to sell
| imagery...you can sell the derivative works so let me do some
| more clarification on the t-shirt idea...i like it and would
| buy one!
| chadd wrote:
| Last year, I was hiking with a crew of Scouts in Philmont, New
| Mexico, and at one point used my Garmin inReach to send a text
| via Satellite to a friend to tell them where we were and that we
| were safe.
|
| At that point I said to the group - when you come back here with
| your families, you won't need to do this - they'll pay $40/month
| to watch a real-time live video feed, from space, in 4k, of our
| 12 day hike.... This is a step toward that future.
| lukefischer wrote:
| Another use great use case! Using thermal cameras in the future
| would also allow you to see through some of the vegetation.
| Search and rescue is a great area to enhance since it's all
| about speed.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Wouldn't this be regulated like encryption if the resolution is
| too fine?
| lukefischer wrote:
| Every country is different. NOAA regulates this for US based
| sensors for the commercial sector. More regulation is coming
| eventually just like every other emerging industry
| slowhadoken wrote:
| "you're purchasing a license to a digital image." Lame.
| ledauphin wrote:
| i mean - very few photographers sell their copyright. a lot
| depends on the terms of the license though.
| tubatime wrote:
| A reasonable expectation might be that at least for new
| imagery this is "work for hire".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They already collected the data and are just giving you a
| part of their independent work under license.
| ledauphin wrote:
| does anyone with expertise know how this resolution compares to
| Google Maps or other "free" providers?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Resolution will be worse.
|
| Age ought to be better unless you got very lucky that a plane
| just flew over and the footage was uploaded very fast
| afterwards.
|
| It's a bit like asking how the resolution of your upcoming spy
| satellite compares to the people you currently have on the
| ground shooting with analog film. It'll be worse, but that's
| not the only aspect.
| Karliss wrote:
| They have resolution samples here https://app.skyfi.com/sample-
| preview .
| KingLancelot wrote:
| [dead]
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Are the images orthorectified? I imagine they have some kind of
| georectification at least, but correction for ground , mountains
| etc is kind of important for measurements for distances and area
| and for tracing etc
| yboris wrote:
| For all their talk about "high resolution" there is nothing in
| the FAQ (or anywhere else I've found) to what that means. _How
| many pixels do you get per square meter on the ground?_ That 's
| the only meaningful measure, and it's lacking.
|
| Am I missing something?
| lolc wrote:
| I too was wondering about the resolution. Found it in the FAQ:
|
| > Our current spatial resolutions range from 50cm to 3m for our
| optical sensors and 5m for our hyperspectral sensor. SkyFi will
| be frequently updating and adding higher resolutions.
|
| https://www.skyfi.com/faqs
| version_five wrote:
| You are missing something. Resolution is the feature size on
| the ground that can be resolved. So (to simpiify) if it's 0.5m
| resolution, and I have some much smaller, but bright reflector
| on the ground, you will see it blurred out to look 0.5m wide.
| It could be a couple pixels wide, it could be a thousand if you
| want to up sample it, the point is you won't see small stuff.
| This is why pixels are not mentioned
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I heard an interesting interview recently with someone who uses
| satellite imagery to trade stocks.
|
| According to him there are data vendors who use such imagery to
| do things like (for example) look at how full the parking lots of
| certain retail stores are and then use that information to help
| them estimate how successful these businesses really are, and
| make stock trades based on that.
| culi wrote:
| Even governments use this technology to calculate how high
| stockpiles of certain minerals or resources are based on
| shadows and time of day
| heipei wrote:
| Yes, though at this point I'd say this is old news and table
| stakes, so I expect everyone to be using this type of data
| already. As an example, Orbital Insights began tracking 250k
| parking lots across 96 retail chains at least all the way back
| to 2017. Same for things like monitoring gas silo levels via
| satellite imagery, etc. If you read it on the blog of one of
| the many sat image providers I would assume there to be no more
| competitive advantage to be had, unless you can read additional
| information from that data that other traders might have
| missed.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Was it Jacob Goldstein's interview with Planet?
|
| https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-da...
| lukefischer wrote:
| It's true and part of our origin story
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you're
| purchasing a license to a digital image._
|
| I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those
| curious:
|
| > _What is SkyFi's licensing policy?_
|
| > _SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite
| industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and
| social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or
| #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is
| clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use
| the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis.
| You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor
| can you sell products you create that contain the images
| themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi
| EULA (End User License Agreement)._
|
| Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven't read the full EULA.
|
| I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do
| with this imagery.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I have to hard disagree on the reasonableness of a licensed
| image. Firstly, I'm the one framing the shot. This isn't a
| photographer making art, this is me paying a company to point a
| camera at xyz coordinates and capture the earth as it is,
| unprocessed. So if I personally plan out the perfect beautiful
| shot, now SkyFi gets to pitch it to others to make additional
| money off it?
|
| Secondly, calling this "democratized" satellite imagery is a
| farce. Democratized to me means here's the pixels you bought,
| it's yours to do whatever you want with.
| mlindner wrote:
| I didn't read their site in detail, but usually you're not
| actually framing the shot. You're buying images that they've
| already taken. Imaging satellites don't let you task the
| angle or direction and they simply continuously take pictures
| of anything underneath them as they pass overhead.
| jffry wrote:
| The linked page prominently talks about pricing for
| existing images from a catalog of existing images, OR
| paying for an entirely new image
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Their final point means that you can't use these in a youtube
| video, even if you only show them for a few seconds and spend
| way more than the cost of these images on your video.
| rmorey wrote:
| Is that true? I would think a YouTube video would fall under
| the first part, sharing on the web/social media. You don't
| sell a YouTube video, you distribute it
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| There are people doing reactions to content so I feel like
| an analysis that includes the video from SkyFi should be
| okay.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| This is a contract of sale? There's no copyright, surely, as
| they're but creative images - they bound by technical
| restrictions not artistic ones. AIUI slavish recreations don't
| attract copyright.
|
| Maybe in USA there's a carve-in for satellite images?
|
| Not sure how space treaties fit with copyright; what's the
| jurisdiction, is it where the satellite was launched from?
| gghffguhvc wrote:
| Just used the iPhone app to purchase an image. Pretty easy
| experience. Sign in with Apple, pay with Apple Pay was slick.
| Just one defect when toggling to medium resolution and back to
| check price difference changed capture area from 25km^2 to some
| large area but not back which was not intuitive. My image will be
| ready inside two weeks which seems reasonable.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Is this just a reseller for Maxar imagery?
|
| FYI if you're working on a federal grant, you technically have
| access to Maxar imagery for free for legitimate purposes via the
| NextView license, though in practice getting access is a bit
| harder (if you work in polar programs, the Polar Geospatial
| Center will help...).
| lukefischer wrote:
| no, not just a reseller. resellers are just a sales channel and
| don't negotiate on process or price on behalf of the customer.
| we do
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Is there any restriction around military bases or can I buy one
| pointed at Area 51, or Russian military bases, or certain
| conflict areas in Ukraine?
| lukefischer wrote:
| First image I got was of Area 51 and Russian troop build ups
| last Feb
| lelag wrote:
| If not, I was thinking this type of services could be a boon to
| moderately-funded OSINT organisations as it would make you able
| to get fresh satellite imagery very easy and accessible.
| mNovak wrote:
| There's been heavy use of these kinds of services for exactly
| this purpose. See [1] for example. Typically airbases, mass
| graves, bridges; things we know won't move or change too
| fast.
|
| [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-
| repo...
| kepler1 wrote:
| Except imagery of Israel, right? For some reason we give them a
| special pass to not be subject to the same scrutiny and concerns
| as other places, huh?
| lukefischer wrote:
| We got the feedback on the cursor. Changing it back as I type,
| lol. Message received :)
| jebarker wrote:
| I dislike that this website replaces my cursor with a circle. Is
| there any good reason to do that?
| stefan_ wrote:
| I like how it goes from full black to full white background.
| Anything to blast my eyes.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely
| (Chrome on MacOS). It's like they built it only for
| touchscreens?
|
| I expect I'll never go back and use it now. Jeez, who signed
| off on this?
| culi wrote:
| Do you have javascript disabled? Some design heavy sites like
| to replace the default cursor. The CSS standard[0] still only
| really supports the few custom cursors that we've had for
| decades now and provides no way to style them so the only way
| to achieve this is through javascript currently
|
| [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No, but it might uBlock origin blocking something, I dunno.
|
| I went into devtools and modified the CSS attribute and was
| able to get past it.
|
| Dumb.
| lukefischer wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. We may go back. I signed off on it
| entropie wrote:
| > It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely
|
| Same. Brave on Windows
| lukefischer wrote:
| just submitted the design change to go back to the regular
| cursor...thought we were being cool, guess not lol
| lukefischer wrote:
| It's all opinions but good feedback. The cursor was a design
| choice. We may go back
| alberth wrote:
| Luke, any chance you could resell Maxar 15cm imagery? (Or if
| something is better, that)
|
| Dealing with their sales process is horrible. I'd love to buy
| it from you given how easy you make it.
|
| https://blog.maxar.com/earth-
| intelligence/2020/introducing-1...
| lukefischer wrote:
| That's the goal...we have some interesting partnerships and
| a partner of ours is Albedo- 10cm resolution. A lot of our
| work deals with negotations to get them to believe the
| mission. Most have incentive to keep selling to the Govt,
| which I totally understand.
| alberth wrote:
| Two follow up questions.
|
| 1. Isn't Albedo fake "10cm". Meaning aren't they using
| 50cm imagery and apply computations to it to "simulate"
| 10cm.
|
| The image on this blog post, when zoomed in is actually
| quite bad
|
| https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery
|
| 2. Can you explain why you mean when you say "most have
| incentivizes to keep selling to govt".
|
| Are you implying they can't work with you?
| virgulino wrote:
| Firefox 109.0 on Windows 10 shows no cursor at all. It is not
| possible to use the site.
| cjensen wrote:
| Be aware that MacOS/Safari still has occasional bugs where
| the cursor shape gets stuck on whatever the web page switched
| it to. I know how to deal with that, but it's an annoyance
| when it happens.
| agolio wrote:
| I like it FWIW :) maybe removing it on information pages like
| for pricing and keeping it on the landing page with the
| interactive glove is a good compromise
| Finnucane wrote:
| Ok my iPad it makes a dot where I touch the screen. It does
| seem like an irrelevant distraction.
|
| Also, it would be nice to be able to search for available
| images without the app.
| [deleted]
| mrahmadawais wrote:
| Oh what has the world come to. This is amazing.
| daemonhunter wrote:
| Custom mouse cursor, how 90s.
| lukefischer wrote:
| It was a design choice we made obviously. Probably gonna go
| back
| gwking wrote:
| On macOS Safari, it causes the mouse to disappear when you
| transition from the browser window to another screen. I can't
| help but wonder how much money they spent creating that
| nuisance.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| in fact, there was a 90s website that sold high resolution
| satellite imagery prints, called Pictopia
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'm generally sceptical of latent EO, but I've never seen such a
| slick B2C play.
|
| Few thoughts:
|
| (1) Depending on your acquisition contracts, you may have
| scattered access to historic imaging. For a consumer, having an
| image of my house around _e.g._ the time of a break-in is
| valuable. (As a party trick, recent imagery will work in a way
| "wait a day" doesn't.)
|
| (2) You've heard this, but it bears repeating: four hours is an
| order of magnitude more valuable than 24 and an order less than
| one. You should be able to predict fast-return windows, given
| orbits and ground station coordinates, for a given AOI. Bonus:
| natural time pressure on the sale.
|
| (3) Multispectral options unclear. May be worth discriminating by
| band.
|
| (4) Exclusivity pricing. Where you sell the image to me, fully,
| and without retaining the right to re-sell it to anyone else.
|
| There also appears to be a name collision with an Israeli ISP?
| lukefischer wrote:
| Excellent thoughts! Once more supply comes then there is
| obviously more consumer optionality (time of a break in). We
| test internally on ordering a New Image via tasking a satellite
| (aka pass prediction) but I'm not willing to release it to the
| wild until its reliable and a magical experience. We aren't
| there yet.
|
| Speed of delivery is extremely important. Again, more supply
| means better speed and future tech will enable downloads
| faster.
|
| Copy all on multispectral and will put that into the pipe to
| clear up re: bands
|
| Exclusivity pricing is interesting and what we talk about a
| lot. It's a tougher problem because you may buy that image from
| us from a specific provider but then another provider could
| take the same exact image and it's not unique anymore.
| Regardless, will work on it and if there is enough demand then
| I'm all about it.
| justicz wrote:
| I'm really excited for this. I thought this was what the company
| Planet (planet.com) was going to be, but when I actually tried to
| buy images from them it went through a complicated sales process
| I couldn't easily complete. I felt like I clearly wasn't the
| target customer. I love websites with an "add to cart" button
| instead of a "contact sales" button :)
| justicz wrote:
| It would be really cool if I could upload a short python
| snippet/map-reduce job to run a piece of code over the entire
| globe. Could be super useful for e.g. counting all of the solar
| farms in the world.
| lukefischer wrote:
| I despise "contact sales" and why I essentially outlawed it at
| the company.
| CPLX wrote:
| I saw this on Twitter last night and bought two pictures. They
| were from the existing images feature at the highest resolution.
|
| The images totally sucked. They were blurry, and the experience
| was completely confusing since the sort of preview type map
| making image where you move the square around was very clear and
| sharp, and then the one I ordered was totally unusable for
| anything.
| lukefischer wrote:
| What were you trying to use it for? Happy to give a full refund
| if you didn't get what you wanted. Email or chat with our
| customer support and give them the details.
| rsync wrote:
| I need this, as in, today.
|
| I am ready to make an immediate purchase. I want to give them my
| money.
|
| But all I see is "launch skyfi" ... and, of course, I don't want
| to "launch" anything. I want to enter simple information into a
| web form and hit a submit button.
|
| I do not need an app install or a telephone. All I need is a web
| browser.
|
| Is it actually impossible to purchase one of these images from
| their actual website ?
| carbocation wrote:
| I felt the same way but clicked "Launch skyfi" anyways. It
| takes you to a login form in the browser. Bad name for a link.
| version_five wrote:
| I clicked the button, on my phone, and got page that said
| it's best viewed in the app, and a link to the app store,
| with no other option SkyFi is an easy-to-use
| mobile or desktop app that allows you to get satellite
| imagery of any place in the world at any given time. SkyFi is
| creating a marketplace for businesses and consumers alike to
| capture earth observation data to make better informed
| business decisions, capture life's most precious memories,
| and more. The SkyFi App, thanks to its satellite partners,
| allows customers to either order a New Image, where a
| satellite in-orbit is ordered to capture an Area of Interest
| for a date in the future, or select an Existing Image from
| our database of hundreds of previously-captured images. The
| best part? This can all be done from your phone, tablet, or
| computer.
|
| This is completely unwanted, I agree with the person at the
| top of the thread.
| cridenour wrote:
| That button just opens a web app in your browser though. Did
| you not try it?
| rsync wrote:
| No, I didn't.
|
| I also didn't try the "culture" link in their page footer ...
| since I had the same interest in their culture as I had in
| "launching" anything.
|
| OK, onward ...
| tubatime wrote:
| Are you this insufferable in real life too? Do you harass
| the wait-staff when the menu says "surcharge" but you think
| it should say "fee"? What other ways should the entire
| world cater to your trivial preferences?
| ademup wrote:
| Down voted because the entirely of this message is
| directed at the poster and nowhere near the topic.
| layer8 wrote:
| On mobile it redirects you to the app-store apps.
| josephpmay wrote:
| You can do exactly that from this link:
| https://app.skyfi.com/welcome
| elitepleb wrote:
| Had to switch browsers on desktop for it not to show: "SkyFi
| on mobile is best viewed on our app."
| lukefischer wrote:
| We have to have an interface that pulls in options. But good
| feedback and would like to know specifics of how you'd intend
| to purchase
| einpoklum wrote:
| Issues:
|
| 1. "resolution (available in medium, high, or very high)" <- so,
| they're not willing to tell me what the resolution is? Is it a
| secret?
|
| 2. I don't like it that there's an app for doing stuff. I don't
| want their app. I just want to (maybe) buy an image.
|
| 3. Why is there a 25 Km^2 minimum? That's huge. Can they really
| not capture smaller areas? I may want to get a satellite image of
| my home town or village (not city).
| conor_f wrote:
| I honestly expected the resolution to be better? The sample
| preview (https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview) really isn't that
| great? Where it the idea this is 50cm resolution from?
| qwertox wrote:
| That's about what you get with a satellite. What maps like
| Google contain is aerial imagery.
|
| Here's [0] an interesting What If (XKCD) which deals with the
| resolution of the Hubble Space telescope if it were pointed at
| the earth.
|
| [0] https://what-if.xkcd.com/32/
| askvictor wrote:
| I'm curious for a re-write of this for JWST
| IceWreck wrote:
| https://app.skyfi.com/explore is much better than the sample
| preview at https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview which is weird
| cause they claim that the sample preview is fully processed and
| better.
|
| But it looks like explore is based on google earth. So the free
| preview is better than the paid thing ?
| coder543 wrote:
| A lot of Google Maps "satellite" imagery is actually aerial
| imagery, not satellite. Getting that kind of detail and
| resolution with satellite photos is extremely hard /
| expensive.
|
| If you want up to date imagery, you could certainly choose to
| task an airplane yourself, but that is going to cost a lot
| more than what SkyFi is charging for one-off satellite
| images.
|
| So, no, the free "preview" is not better than the paid thing,
| and the reason they're using Google Maps is clearly to help
| you precisely mark the area that you want them to capture.
| invalidator wrote:
| Did you zoom in? When I zoom in on one of the major
| intersections and look at the cars, it looks about right. Half-
| meter resolution means that each car should be several blurry
| pixels wide, and that's what I get.
| alberth wrote:
| When I zoom into my property, a Google logo is display. So I
| assume they are sourcing from them.
| [deleted]
| qwertox wrote:
| The explorer is actually Google Maps. It looks like they
| are using it for you to have a tool to select the area that
| interests you.
|
| Maybe there should be a disclaimer.
| 7ewis wrote:
| I zoomed in, was also disappointed. Don't know the use case
| for these photos, but when you compare it to the quality of
| say a drone photo, SkyFi is nowhere near as good.
|
| I'm sure there must be a market for these photos, but for
| most people I think a drone is probably better and more cost
| effective.
| lukefischer wrote:
| we have drone partnerships, airplane, stratospheric
| balloons, etc and are just STARTING with satellites. Drone
| imagery is better but a problem of scale but we are trying
| to solve that. Think of it not as photos but more so of
| data....we could never list the complete use cases here
| because there are so many
| alberth wrote:
| > but when you compare it to the quality of say a drone
| photo
|
| Comparing a satellite/plane photo to a drone is apples to
| oranges.
|
| There's no way to scale a business in providing global
| drone level coverage.
|
| Now there are services that fly planes with high res
| imagery that can get down to ~20cm. And even these business
| are super difficult to scale.
| [deleted]
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| It looks about right You can plainly see the 5 yd line markers
| on House Field (in Austin, TX) on the image. Those lines are at
| most 15cm wide - enough to seriously desaturate the green in
| any pixel that contains a line, but nowhere near enough to show
| as a sharp line.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The 50cm resolution is much better than what I expected (you
| can clearly see lines that are much less than 50 cm wide), but
| the 75 cm resolution is much, much worse than the 50cm one. Is
| it possible that some of the "50 cm" imagery is actually much
| better than 50 cm (which would defeat the purpose of a sample)?
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Keep in mind that if you are looking for "Hi-Resolution" images
| of Israel, the results may be limited by the Kyl Bingaman
| Amendment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment
| thaufeki wrote:
| Wow its not even an international agreement, it's just straight
| up an American law for Israel's benefit in particular
| cstejerean wrote:
| > After a further review in 2019, the NOAA reversed itself and
| dropped the GSD limit to 0.4m in a decision published in the
| Federal Register on 21 July 2020.
|
| So I think "high resolution" is fine as it is >= 50cm
| londons_explore wrote:
| The fact they charge differently for existing vs new images tells
| me that they will probably let you know which applies before
| purchase...
|
| And if that's the case, I think there could be a market for a
| monitoring/alerting system to detect if anyone else orders
| imagery of your factory/port.
| campchase wrote:
| Absolutely brutal for the SkyFi team trying to have a relaxing
| Saturday afternoon - keep up the good work, you nuts.
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