[UPDATE 15-April: Google has posted the full details (at the bottom half of the post) for the imagery and terrain update.]
Google has pushed out a new imagery update in Google Earth just in time for Easter! No details have been released, but after a few E-mails from GEB readers (thanks Andreas, Jan, and Doug!) I’ve confirmed several updates. Thankfully, Google did NOT update both GE and Google Maps at the same time like they did last time. This means we can compare GE to Google Maps to confirm whether the imagery is new.
Below is a list of what has been found. If you find other areas which are new (just check with Google Maps to verify whether imagery is new), then report it here in the comments. Here’s the list so far (UPDATED 1730):
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United States – New broad coverage of high resolution for states which still had low resolution imagery: Arizona, Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Tennessee, Maine, New York, and western Pennsylvania. (Thanks to Andreas for these) Also, New York City, NY.
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India – India has been re-colorized (like Australia had done in December). The imagery looks a lot less like patchwork when viewed from above.
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France – New area in central France near Chateauroux.
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Spain – San Sebastian and other areas along the north coast. Thanks Jan W.
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Sweden – About 1/3rd of the country now has high res and blended with new colors. Thanks Brian, Dunkleosteus.
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Morocco – Looks like lots of Morocco has medium res Spot Image imagery.
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Brazil – São Paulo. Thanks joaorcunha, Bill S.
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Scotland – A few strips of new high res. Thanks Chris.
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Antarctica – Many places have new high res. Thanks Xavier.
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South Korea – Entire country high res. Thanks Thilo.
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Austria – Several parts in central and eastern part of the country have new high res. Thanks Thilo.
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
Actually, only about third of Sweden is now hires. The boundary seems to go along 61°17’N.
I’ve spotted new VERY high res imagery for downtown São Paulo, Brazil – much higher res than normal DigitalGlobe data.
São Paulo, Brazil, has been updated in high resolution too
SCOTLAND – small steps in the right direction: a new strip E from Stranraer in the extreme SW; and three new patches showing the windswept landscape of the Orkney Isles. But plenty of scope for further improvement.
Plus those Orkney Isles (and the Scilly Isles off SW England) sunk without trace when Ocean was launched are restored as low res blurs. Perhaps such reinstatement has also happened elsewhere on GE.
Two third of Antarctica, many locations I have been to.
Entire country of South Korea has high-res.
But only the southern half of Sweden.
Austria: more parts of Styria and Lower Austria are hogh-res now.
New imagery in New Jersey (Atlantic City, Wildwood, Cape May)
New Imagery in France
Add the following departements:
Bas-Rhin and Pyrenees-Orientales
Poland: some new high-res imaginery strips in Masovian and Warmian-Masurian Voivodeships.
A couple of new higher res patches in Hungary
Russia (with bits of Kazakhstan):
Syropyatskoye, Bogoslovka, Mitrofanovka, Metelevo, Chistoozernoye, Stepnoye Ozero, Blagoveshchenka, Razdol’noye… (maybe even more). Images are from the first half of 2008
I see 2 new complete départements in France :
Pyrénées-Orientales (Perpignan)
Indre (Châteauroux)
New imagery in Switzerland around Lausanne.
A small strip of medium resolution in a sea of low resolution imagery around Lavik, Norway.
– Michael
IRELAND: Good quality 9 month old imagery (2008) of north Dublin and suburbs added. Very nice imagery indeed.
However there is a lot of room for improvement with regard to coverage of Ireland. (County Meath border is still incorrectly delineated along the east coast, it should run along the beach)
A strip of new imagery over Oranmore in Galway, Ireland, confirmed in Google Maps
Why can’t I see these images on the Mac version? Are the Mac images usually updated a bit later?
2 new state of the art baseball stadiums opening up this year (that have been under construction for 3 years) and still no imagery update to Queens and Bronx NY in those areas…. sighs…
Ireland
One DG tile to east of Galway City dated June 8 2008.
And a strip of DG (May 06 2008) along East coast from Wicklow Town northwards through Dublin City to Balbriggan.
I was very happy to hear that entire South Korea has high res. images, but no high res. at all. That is, the entire low res. images(LANDSAT) has replaced with 2.5m SPOT images, but no 60 cm res images(QuickBird) or no 40cm res. images(GeoEye-1).
Anyway it is good news for me as a Korean, Thanks!
New imagery in Japan.
Fukuyama-city
Sibiu, Romania has a new image from 30 June 2008 but it’s a image with a large cloud coverage. The last one is better than this one. This is the single modification in Romania so far.
“Plus those Orkney Isles (and the Scilly Isles off SW England) sunk without trace when Ocean was launched are restored as low res blurs. Perhaps such reinstatement has also happened elsewhere on GE.”
Looks like so. The Bear Island (Bjørnøya) is finally visible in GE, but only with very low-quality coverage.
Scotland may have the most cloudy coverage, but I guess we can say without exaggeration that Finland has the worst coverage overall. Most towns are still missing hires satellite photos, and the terrain quality is substandard.
Ugly misalignment finally fixed in coast of Chile: 32°15’S 71°29’W
Geneva & Lausanne, Switzerland. Images are of 7 May 2008.
imagery south of dublin – the town of Bray – seems to have gotten WORSE.
this was hi-res before. now its somewhat smudged lower res.
Some new imagery east of Brescia and south of Garda lake (Italy)
Virginia Tech has high res imagery but has problems with 3d building. The softball stadium is misaligned well off from the image. The baseball stadium also. Plus it appears VT has discovered anti-gravity. The stadium and several building are floating well above ground.
Vancouver Canada has new imagery (on mountains, and in parts of the city).
The Fraser Valley east of Vancouver, Canada has been updated, including my town of Abbotsford. Imagery was horribly out of date, in fact when they added historical imagery the slider showed that there were 3 newer updates for Abbotsford but they were using the oldest (least flaws I believe). Imagery now being used is newer than all the historical ones. Cities updated include Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford, but not Chilliwack. Western point of the updates can be seen by the colour change at 49.227018 -122.863558.
A strip of west of dublin has been added, about half of Lucan is now shown, and instead of being all ragged its a perfect square around the city and surrounding areas, BIG DEAL!! wheres our huge update of the whole country weve been waiting years for…
Holyhead, whales has imagery now aswell…
There’s a lot of new imagery on the west coast of Norway, especially around Bergen. Places that have received high(/higher) res imagery includes Osterøy, Sotra, Solund, Bremanger, Øygarden, Os, Kvam and Voss.
Haugesund, between Bergen and Stavanger has also received higher res imagery, and so has various areas to the south of Stavanger, although some of this imagery is dark to the point of nearly making it unusable.
SCOTLAND – two more small areas: a very narrow strip west from Peterjead, finally parting the cloud cover, and the Street View cars also wandered around the area; and part of Caithness in the extreme NE.
This is 2003 imagery, and the process by which such selective parts appear on GE remains a mystery.
FINALLY the Adirondack park (new york) is high res! I have waited so long for this. went from about 95% coverage 🙂
Tennessee has not been updated for a year according to the map. At least in our area which is south of Nashville.
Florianopolis – South Brazil – some parts of the island and continent have now great high resolution quality!
Vancouver, Canada: Stanley Park (Updated image, now you can see 2006 windstorm damage)
New coverage of Windsor, Maidenhead and Wokingham in England. Half of Heathrow Airport is also covered in the update.
Image is dated 28 September 2008.
Germany – Hochneukirch and the resettlement sites like Otzenrath and Holz.
I don’t see any hi-res for AZ. Where and how can I view it.
Don’t know when this appeared, but a large water filled chasm has opened up 1/3 of the way along the main runway at Christchurch International Airport! -43.484224°, 172.535584°
England – the new high res 2008 imagery in the Windsor area spotted by Peter extends from just east of Reading to Hampton Court on the SW border of Greater London, covering a heavily populated area.
You can see a point in including the newly opened Terminal 5 at Heathrow in the imagery, but it is disconcerting to see the northern part still under construction – there were problems when it opened, but not that bad. Perhaps GE should have waited until all the 2006 imagery can be updated.
The North Shore of Auckland (New Zealand) is massively improved. I can see a cable that I know to be only 1 inch wide going across a garden.
Also there are some new spots in central Denmark
The North Shore of Auckland is great – good that I live there too! The resolution is fine enough to see the wires on my TV Aerial!
Thank you GoogleEarth for the new images for Morocco,lots of Morocco has medium res Spot Image imagery.we are waiting for more updates.
Bahamas (New Providence – Nassau) update please!!
I live in New Providence Bahamas (the island where the capital Nassau is located). I notice that the image and terrain image of New Providence is very old even if the bottom says 2009. This is a problem in GE and Google maps. Please update the images. Than you, very much appreciated.