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December 07, 2005
Funky Buildings, Haunted Boats in Google Earth
Someone was asking at the Google Earth Community about some Google Earth pictures of what looked like ghost sailboats 
in the UK. If you look at the above link you will see the boats look dim and faded compared to the other nearby boats. The reason these boats look this way is that they lie near the edge of two aerial photos in the Google Earth database. In order to make the images look continuous, the image database people blend the edges of the two photos so the colors match more closely. They try to make sure objects are not along the edges, but boats are hard to spot in these images.
Another example of this type of edge blending is in high resolution photos of big cities. Along the edge of photos in a downtown area may be large buildings. Since the aerial photos are likely taken at different angles (the plane is in a different spot), the angles of the tall buildings are different. To help with the blending, the database people actually cut the edges around the tall buildings and let them overlap. See this example from Chicago, Illinois.
Posted by FrankTaylor at December 7, 2005 09:04 AM
Comments
Posted by: Shawn at December 7, 2005 12:23 PM
Note, I updated the link above to include a link to a bridge that was a victim of the image blending process.
Posted by: Shawn at December 7, 2005 02:43 PM
"Since the aerial photos are likely taken at different angles (the plane is in a different spot)"
Are the high res areas taken with Planes??? I thought it was with satelites
Posted by: Brian at December 7, 2005 06:16 PM
Much of the high resolution images are aerial photos.
Posted by: Julian at December 7, 2005 06:43 PM
How can I improve my picture when I zoom in ? I don't think I am getting the best, it is out of focus.I am using the Window XP with the grafic card NVIDIA Thanks Kyles
Posted by: Kyl;es Carpenter at December 8, 2005 03:44 AM
That was my post in Chicago!
Posted by: Ryan at December 10, 2005 05:45 PM
There are some great photos of airplanes landing at airports. At DFW, you can see the same plane at different locations, coming in for a landing.
Posted by: doodle at December 14, 2005 11:26 AM
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Here's another example. Disappearing cars on I-395 going into Washington, DC. If ou zoom out, you can also see the edges of the blended images.
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