Google Earth definition / clarity

[aspinwing]

Why are certain areas of Google Earth highly detailed - when viewing from a height of eye of, say, 1000 mts and others a total blur? Roughly the same latitude so that shouldn't be the issue.
Are some of the areas restricted? For example: one miliary dockyard very detailed but countryside a total blur.

[cortilla]

Whilst google earth starts with sattelite pictures, the lower down you get, the higher the likelyhood is that the pictures were taken from an aircraft, so it's just dependant on whether or not there are commercial aerial pictures available for the area.

The best british commercial sattelite has a definiton of 2m x 2m so not very useful for detailed pics for google earth.

[seacue]

Today's Washington Post has a discussion of Google Earth resolution in central DC. They say that Google had two options: (1) high resolution images from an official source which had a number of locations fuzzed out, or (2) somewhat less sharp images of this area which had not been further degraded. They chose (2) for parts of central DC. They used the high resolution official pictures for the rest of the city.

Edited to note that the newspaper story was about Google Maps, not Earth. I don't see "fuzzing" on either Maps or Earth, except at the Naval Observatory where the Vice-Presidential Mansion is located. The story seems incorrect to me. I find that some atomic electric generating stations in the USA are low resolution while others are not.

[A Very Civil Pilot]

Looking at my house on Google Earth, the picture gets suspiciously fuzzy about half way across the road. The other side of the street is fine. Is it because I have a secret Uranium enrichment facility in the shed?

[aspinwing]

Makes sense

The different sources would seem to be the answer. The key is the copyright notice at the bottom of the page. I had not paid attention to it. While checking a few areas, I had up to three copyright notices; Digital Globe, TerraMetrics, Europa Technologies, Navteq and even Yellowpages.ca.

I take comfort on knowing that my new home will not be a target as it is totally fuzzy.

Thanks

[P.Pilcher]

Google intentially reduce the definition of some of the higher resolution areas on the free google earth system. I know this because recently I was inspecting a presentaltion for a local possible planning application for land at the back of my house. I recognised the aerial photograph - the colour and position of the parked cars, the lack of certain recently added extensions and conservatories and in the bottom rhight hand corner was the copyright Google symbol. However this paid for photograph was of much higher definition than the indentical image I was used to on my computer screen.

P.P.