It appears that Google has just pushed out a fresh batch of imagery! Thanks to sharp-eyed GEB reader ‘Munden’ for being the first to let us know about it.
Unlike some of the other recent updates, this imagery isn’t yet in Google Maps. As a result, you can compare Google Earth to Google Maps to determine what is new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they’re not identical, that means that you’ve found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!
Some of the updated areas include:
- France: Tolouse
- Italy: Palermo, Zingarello
- Japan: Maebashi
- United Kingdom: Eastbourne, West Wittering
- United States: California (Fairfield, Half Moon Bay, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Saulsalito, Sonoma, Suisan Bay, Watsonville, Woodland), Minnesota (Bemidji, Park Rapids), North Dakota (Galesburg, Valley City)
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
Rahovec, Kosovo (8/25/2013).
As GB-reader AC mentioned yesterday in his post under “Recent new imagery in Google Earth”, Google Earth shows a KMZ for an update dated September 10. Toulouse, France is in that update.
A high res update of the whole of the Rhine delta in the Netherlands as far NE as The Hague is also in the 10 September KMZ which only appeared on 23 September (will currently show if ‘latest imagery’ is checked in layers). Continues recent confusion in the release of updates.
The 24 September update described as “Wittering and Eastbourne” in the UK extends over most of East and West Sussex, including Brighton and to the north into Surrey – high res but rather dark toned.
Yes Maarten, it is dated September 10, but the file on the server has yesterday’s date, so it is brand new.
This process of KMZ and layer updating is becoming rather messy. The areas updated a few weeks ago aren’t yet in the historical layer, so many of them are still invisible (due to that “mania” of using (6) years old dated imagery as the main imagery…).
A large area around Bergerac (SW of France) has very recent new imagery, dated Aug. 15, 2013
In the September 10-file a large area in the southwest of the Netherlands is indicated as new imagery. Quite recent imagery (July 8th, 2013)! Strange enough some of that imagery is already in Google Maps too (e.g. the town of Middelburg), while other parts are not yet in Google Maps (e.g. Scheveningen)…
The date in the update kml is a mistake because the other day I made a file at GEH with locations of all Concordes in the World. This morning it was as I made it but later the updatew appeared and the Toulouse planes were moved.
Also the sight of Dunsfold Airfield and Top Gear changed today. That was mentioned as update September 6.
Toulouse – update is included in the 10 September KMZ issued on 23 September (so, unless there has been a further very quick update, strictly speaking it should not be in the 24 September round of updates), but its high quality is welcome.
The toulouse sight in the sept. 10. IS an error. That appeared today. No doubt about that.
… but to see the bounded area of the Toulouse update the 10 September KMZ has to be opened, and it did appear at least on my desktop on 23 September (wish Google would sort out the current confusion in updates).
Exactly what I mean Chris. ;.)
With regards to several of the updates being discussed, I actually included an explanation in my original submission with regards to them, but it was just too long to be posted in the update notice I’m sure.
Toulouse is not new, anymore than the Netherlands update nor the Kent update (far SE) in the UK. All of these were actually in the update listed, but they weren’t in general the default. I’ll start with the update in the UK. Note that Rochester, Gillingham, and Southend-on-Sea now have the new imagery as their default. This imagery was installed in the Sep 6th update, but wasn’t the default. I assumed this was because it was a lower resolution despite being much newer. When this update went live late last night (my time) the new imagery had been made into the default. Thus if you weren’t checking closely, it appeared to be new but it wasn’t truly new.
This same thing happened to the Netherlands imagery. I’d noticed it a few days prior when looking at Vlissingen, but it was not the default when you got to the Hague.
When I checked Toulouse, the main area didn’t appear updated where it was very high resolution, but I was fairly sure the outer edges had been updated. So again, you wouldn’t have seen any update in Toulouse because this wasn’t set as the default imagery nor would it have been visible in the history. (none of the last THREE updates is in the history yet) When the update went through, the same thing happened in Toulouse as the other locations where the new imagery in the previous update became the default.
Hope that’s clear enough.
…. not really. Please explain what you mean by “not new” … the new July 2013 imagery in the far SE of the UK (6 Sept KMZ) appears to have been the default well before “last night” (23 Sept), with a resolution as good or better than the previous imagery.
As I said, Chris, the new imagery clearly went far to the north and south of the cities I mentioned, and yet those cities themselves were NOT showing the update on the 6th. I was disappointed that they left the older imagery as the default because I was hoping they would update Rochester’s airport. If it went in as the default before this current update, it was not long before it and well AFTER the Sep 6th addition. Most of the checking I was making in the area was at Ramsgate to see if the new imagery was in the history set yet.
That’s what I mean by ‘not new’. The imagery was in place in several of these locations, but parts of it were hidden under older default imagery thanks to Google logic.
Thanks – that explains it (more inexplicable Google “logic”). But the end result of generally better imagery in SE UK – now extended across Sussex as well – is good 🙂
USA:
Montana: Helena, Butte
Washington: Spokane, Colville, Republic, Kettle Falls
When Ukraine will be adding large images of aerial photography, such as in Italy?
Italy: Taormina, Vampolieri, Caltagirone
New Google Earth Imagery – September 24, 2013. France: Bergerac
UK – Wales: Porthawl, Swansea and goes north in a section up to Tirabad
kml is updated
Pretty much all of the Swansea area has been updated too
New imagery today (28-09-2013) for Ockley in Surrey in the UK
It seems likely historical imagery will be updated only once after every 5 imagery updates
And as usual Google are hiding the latest map updates in many areas in the history layer. 🙁
I am suspecting more and more *Google* ever since the China privacy incident is now just a shadow of their former selves much like RareWare being called *Rare* which they once cranked out a lot of games for the Nintendo 64 machines and now work for Xbox Kinetic.
It’s sad how fast companies can fade away.
Further proof that Google seems to care less *if at all* about Street View anymore is this link is broken. http://maps.google.ie/intl/en/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/
You can see the *Where Google Street View is covered* but when you go to the *See Where we are currently Driving” just loads in a circle forever.
I bet the New World OrDER black ops got to Google and pulled the plug!
I think I found the oldest street view image on earth! In the Salem MA area I found an image dated back to August of 2007 which is a side road going what looks like by a bus barn!
There are TONS of street view images in the North East that have not been touched since 2008 and some from 2007.