Satellite images

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EDB
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Re: Satellite images

Post by EDB » Tue May 31, 2022 2:23 pm

wickid wrote:I think for a landscape the license fees would run in to the 10.000 euro range easy.
A few years back this was 90.000-300.000 euro for an average Condor landscape size and resolution. I think the prices haven't come down...

Google et al don't own most of the data. They hire it. That's why mass downloading of this data is prohibited.

Google monitors the use of it's services and goes after users.

It's not wise to share such data.

6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 3:53 pm

I saw today a pricing of 25 EUR / km², that will be on a 24 x 25 tiles landscape over 6 mio ...

Good to change to a free one. Have testet a little bit more with Sentinel. Looks very good from the distance, but it's not as sharp as google, when you come closer to the ground. Tried a download with zoom 17. One hour to download one tile but nearly no improvement.

So it will be zoom 16, good looking from distance, not so good at the ground and no worry about licensing. Everything has it's price.

My landscapes are flat land, they will be looking much better with the new texture. And if you come closer to the ground you have other problems than to see at the textures ... ;-)
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EDB
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Re: Satellite images

Post by EDB » Tue May 31, 2022 5:11 pm

Landsat Sentinel is 10mpx max (z13). You can use it to make a 5mpx landscape (no extra data but less pixelated). Personally I think source data should be 5mpx or better at least. Preferably 2mpx for a 2,5mpx landscape because you loose info on reprojecting...

Most photorealistic Condor landscapes are made in 2,5mpx.

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Kekelekou
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Re: Satellite images

Post by Kekelekou » Tue May 31, 2022 5:41 pm

I agree : the higher the definition, the more eye-candy we get.
But it sure is difficult to find shareable, cloudless, color-uniform imagery. So we might have to accept lower resolution for some areas.

6266 wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 3:53 pm
...

6266 : Would you mind posting the best picture you get with UMP of Räyskälä airport (60.744701N 24.1078E)? Thank you!
Last edited by Kekelekou on Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 5:45 pm

EDB wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 5:11 pm
Landsat Sentinel is 10mpx max (z13). You can use it to make a 5mpx landscape (no extra data but less pixelated). Personally I think source data should be 5mpx or better at least. Preferably 2mpx for a 2,5mpx landscape because you loose info on reprojecting...

Most photorealistic Condor landscapes are made in 2,5mpx.
ok, and where do you get these images for free?
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 5:48 pm

Kekelekou wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 5:41 pm
6266 : Would you mind posting the best picture you get with UMP of Räyskälä airport (60.744701N 24.1078E)? Thank you!
I will try it soon. You mean downloaded from Sentinel?
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 6:21 pm

6266 wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 5:48 pm
Kekelekou wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 5:41 pm
6266 : Would you mind posting the best picture you get with UMP of Räyskälä airport (60.744701N 24.1078E)? Thank you!
I will try it soon. You mean downloaded from Sentinel?
I only got a black picture, maybe I did something wrong
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 10:22 pm

You can look here, it's the same data

https://s2maps.eu/
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Wed Jun 01, 2022 5:02 am

Kekelekou wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 5:41 pm
I agree : the higher definition, the more eye-candy we get.
But it sure is difficult to find shareable, cloudless, color-uniform imagery. So we might have to accept lower resolution for some areas.

6266 wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 3:53 pm
...

6266 : Would you mind posting the best picture you get with UMP of Räyskälä airport (60.744701N 24.1078E)? Thank you!
The sentinal images are actual sattelite images where as the google data is mostly aerial photography.

The sentinal data is taken from a 786 km altitude sunsynchronous orbit. That means all the pictures will have the same illumination angle as the sun is in the same position at each pass. The altitude means there is a physical limit to the resolution you can photograph at due to the camera being so far away.

Google's data is taken from airplanes flying at maybe 1 km altitude. So they can get much higher resolution images. However the planes fly at all times of the day so the data is patchy with many different cameras and illumination angles.
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Re: Satellite images

Post by Kekelekou » Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:36 am

6266 wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 10:22 pm
You can look here, it's the same data

https://s2maps.eu/
That’s what I was supecting, thanks for the confirmation!

What a pity that the 2,5m/px, cloudless, colour- uniformised Copernicus mosaic of ALL EU countries is not available for public use. :cry:

https://land.copernicus.eu/imagery-in-s ... resolution
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:38 am

Here is my first screenshot from a landscape with a texture made with sentinel data.
sentinel2.jpg
I researched a lot in the last hours. If I understand right the sentinel data are the best you can get for free, higher resolution always is commercial. If I'm wrong, why nobody name a source of better quality?

I have never seen a landscape in Condor with such a low resolution. So my conclusion is, that all are made with commercial sources, hoping not to get a problem. But if you get a problem, you sell your house. I wouldn't take that risk.

In the tutorial (soaringtools) they are talking about "fair use", showing this 15 years old link

https://FreeGeographyTools.com/2007/fai ... th-imagery

Is it still like that? The sources wickid posted are very clear in my eyes.

If I would be responsible for Condor, I would try to get an official agreement with the suppliers (google, bing a.s.o) to use their images in landscapes. If there exist such an agreement, everybody can be safe in using it. Especially FAI should be interested in such an agreement. Using landscapes with a theoretical risk of a copyright problem in a semi-commercial event like the FAI GP ... I stopp thinking now.

I will continue replacing the texture of NorthGermany, will see how it is to use it. Like it looks now I can't believe that it will be really good
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Re: Satellite images

Post by Kekelekou » Wed Jun 01, 2022 8:38 am

6266 wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:38 am
why nobody name a source of better quality?
Well, there might be no worldwide solution. It depends on the country : France and Sweden public services provide really nice imagery.
The National Land Service of Finland does provide aerial imagery in HD, but the area I am interested in was shot in early spring with a lot of snow showing up and brownish land. :(
So quite a bit of luck is involved regarding the availability of free, HD, Condor-suited coverage.
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Wed Jun 01, 2022 9:56 am

I think the Condor team doesn't want to burn their fingers on landscapes using aerial photography. That is why they do not host landscapes on the main condor site
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:49 pm

6266 wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:38 am
In the tutorial (soaringtools) they are talking about "fair use", showing this 15 years old link

https://FreeGeographyTools.com/2007/fai ... th-imagery

Is it still like that? The sources wickid posted are very clear in my eyes.
My source is the current EULA for Google Maps and Google Earth.



A disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or a copyright expert


The link you posted talking about fair use pretty much sums it up for Condor landscapes:
Creating a large-area, high-resolution georeferenced mosaic of just the imagery alone, and then posting it for download on your website, even if you don’t charge for it, will in all likelihood earn you a cease-and-desist letter from Google, and for good cause.
That is pretty much what you are doing when creating a landscape. Even if you add the height data, trees, thermal map ect. The base images are still pretty much the downloaded textures, maybe with a touch up here and there. That is (IMHO) definitely not "transformative" under fair use.

The EULA permits limited download and display of the images provided that you do not remove the watermarks and logo's. A gliding example: If your club wants to make a briefing showing where the trafficpattern and landing areas are using a google maps image as the base, you can do this under the EULA. You just have to keep the watermarks visible. You can then draw on the image what you want to show and provide it for free on your website, print it to display at the airfield ect.
Knipsel.JPG
The image above would constitute fair use for example. I'm using a limited bit of data to make my point clear. I'm displaying all the copyright data. In this case the red arrow showing that the images belong to Aerodata International Surveys. This is an aerial survey company operating several GA planes for aerial photography. The blue arrow shows that the GIS data comes from Maxar Technologies. That is a satellite operator having several earth observation and synthetic aperture radar satellites in orbit. The Yellow box shows googles own watermark.

All these need to be displayed when using the images according to the EULA. Condor is a pretty niche product, but if any of these companies smell money you may be lucky if they only sent you a cease and desist letter. We are not talking about peanuts here, as you said it may be several million euros worth of images...

A good video to watch about copyright law and fair use is by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU. It is quite long, but it has some good examples of real world "fair use" and abuse of copyright.

I'm 99.9% sure you can get into trouble using google images on your landscape. There are countries that provide images in HD for free, some only for their citizens.
6266 wrote:
Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:38 am
If I would be responsible for Condor, I would try to get an official agreement with the suppliers (google, bing a.s.o) to use their images in landscapes. If there exist such an agreement, everybody can be safe in using it. Especially FAI should be interested in such an agreement. Using landscapes with a theoretical risk of a copyright problem in a semi-commercial event like the FAI GP ... I stopp thinking now.
The landscape that comes with Condor uses synthetic images. Those are no problem at all as they are completely original. These photorealistic landscapes are made by users like you and they are responsible for the legality of the data. I bet you it will not be cheap and may draw the attention of the copyright owners onto our little community. So I don't think the Condor team should contact Google or Bing ect.

I may still have some tileable base images to create synthetic textures somewhere (Grass, trees, fields). You can use them with masks created with any GIS software to create pretty convincing almost photorealistic textures.
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Wed Jun 01, 2022 4:26 pm

Thanks wickid for your very concrete and detailled comment. I agree to all you wrote. The problem may also be for those using the landscapes, not only those sharing it. For me I found a conclusion to react on all these thoughts:

1. I will finish replacing the texture on NorthGermany (estimated finished next week) with sentinel data and will test it. I believe it will not be good enough. Maybe some will test it too, so it will be shared on my server, info is coming when it happened

2. I will only use landscapes where I'm safe, my own sentinel landscapes (if I like them) and the synthetical Slovenia and some from CondorWorld

I'm lucky not to depend from especially landscapes in my flying, because in the Vintage Series you can fly where you want, and that flying is the only one I do at the moment.
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