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Google Offers Hybrid Satellite and Map View

Posted by Zonk on from the best-of-both-worlds dept.

That's Unpossible! writes "Google Maps now offers a hybrid view which combines their map view with their satellite view. The Google blog has a notice on the update. It appears to use 8-bit alpha transparent PNGs to make it work."

12 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nice by bladx · · Score: 3, Informative

    They've had arrows pointing out traffic flow for a while now... as far as I know. (Because I used it a while ago to see traffic flow for a certain city...)

  2. Not entirely new by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mapper of Doom has had this for quite some time, albeit with existing data from Terraserver.

  3. Re:Hmm... by SpinJaunt · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.InternetExplorerSupportForPNG

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    /. is good for you.
  4. Scale! by OrangeGoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    They added a scale since the last time I checked the maps, too! Halleluah!

    1. Re:Scale! by OrangeGoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not really. Depending on how they project from spheroid to rectangle, the scale should change. The distance between parallels is constant, but the distance between meridians decreases as you move further from the equator.

      I guess it is actually odd, though, because the rectangle covers the same area at all times. Interesting.

  5. Scaled as well by Penguin · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's pretty neat - the satellite photos are no longer wrapped around a cylinder (making places far away north or south from equator look squished).

    Unfortunately there still isn't maps available for Europe besides England. I hope it would arrive soon.

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    - Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
    1. Re:Scaled as well by mike.newton · · Score: 5, Informative

      Excuse me, there are maps for Ireland as well. (Not to mention Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.)

  6. IE supported as well (transparent PNG) by Penguin · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are a couple of different ways to achieve transparent PNGs in IE - besides simple 100% transparent colors (as known from gifs). The Google overlay isn't simply 100% transparent. The same goes for the "speech bubble" when clicking on different places.

    There are a couple of different methods. The Google Maps API mentions one:

    http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#XHT ML_and_VML

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    - Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
  7. PNG support in IE by gusnz · · Score: 5, Informative

    OK, so as sort of a meta-reply to all the posters asking about IE and PNG support, here's 2 interesting hacks you can use to get your PNG magic rolling in MSIE.

    MSIE (as of v6) doesn't support 32 bit transparent PNGs natively, but there is a cool hack where you can dither them down to 8 bits, retaining translucenct for browsers that support it, and using 1-bit transparency in MSIE, so it still looks OK.

    Alternatively, you can use the AlphaImageLoader() filter for near native IE PNG support -- that's a link to my own free CSS behavior that automatically adds IMG and background-image support for PNGs to MSIE 5.5+.

    Either way, PNGs rock, except for the lack of a cross-platform gamma standard -- if you need to match other colours on your site, just use JPEGs/GIFs.

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    <!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
  8. Re:Very Impressive by killa62 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The accuracy of the overlay seems to vary according to the elevation of the area and also the image itslf.
    Because of the fact that sattilites can only zoom in so far and still have a good image, in areas where you can zoom all the way in, they have to use airplanes to take pictures. Nevertheless, these survery airplanes have to maintain a perfect or almost perfect parallellness with the ground or else the image will look shifted. In places where the overlays are not very exact, the most common reason is than when the sattilite image was taken, the survey plane's camera was not pointing straight down and resulted in a shifted overlay in relation to the real image.

  9. This guy did it earlier... by GillBates0 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I wholly agree that this is a very cool development, but some credit has to go to this guy who developed it first with the Google API.

    And I find his GUI better than Google's. It's slicker, and the ability to adjust the transparency (slider at the bottom) is quite innovative. As is also the ability to move the foreground or background and have the other align itself accordingly.

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    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  10. Re:Nice by surprise_audit · · Score: 4, Informative
    I just looked for my house, and found something a bit out of place. The road running past my house has another road joining it as T-junction, with the upright part of the T running directly away from the house. Google Maps shows that as a 4-way intersection, with a completly fictitious road following what is in fact a drainage ditch... And just up the road the map shows a cross-street that runs through someone's house...

    I too wonder where they get their data. I was looking at a couple of mapping apps a few weeks ago, playing with a GPS puck I got for my birthday, and I think one of those shows the same stupid mistakes in the streets. It was either Microsoft Streets and Trips, or it was Rand McNally Streetfinder. I don't remember which, and right now I don't have either loaded because my disk drive died...

    The satellite view shows my pool, though, so - Hey!! I can see my pool from space!!