The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Theory => Topic started by: devils advocate on October 23, 2017, 02:39:24 PM
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So I was looking at Google maps as directed in my research and as promised Antarctic is messed up!
https://www.google.com/maps/@-68.5635233,78.1896801,21626m/data=!3m1!1e3 (https://www.google.com/maps/@-68.5635233,78.1896801,21626m/data=!3m1!1e3)
Switch between Satellite and Map and they hardly seem to match at all.
I guess one answer is that Maps shows the actual "ground" whilst satellite shows the ice floes etc but can this really account for all the difference? Also the quality is patchy to say the least!
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So I was looking at Google maps as directed in my research and as promised Antarctic is messed up!
https://www.google.com/maps/@-68.5635233,78.1896801,21626m/data=!3m1!1e3 (https://www.google.com/maps/@-68.5635233,78.1896801,21626m/data=!3m1!1e3)
Switch between Satellite and Map and they hardly seem to match at all.
I guess one answer is that Maps shows the actual "ground" whilst satellite shows the ice floes etc but can this really account for all the difference? Also the quality is patchy to say the least!
I'm not sure if yours is doing the same, but mine is swapping from a 3D rendered view to a Mercator projection when moving between Sat and Map views. Could this be the issue? Or part of it?
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I'm not sure if yours is doing the same, but mine is swapping from a 3D rendered view to a Mercator projection when moving between Sat and Map views. Could this be the issue? Or part of it?
I'm not technically gifted (clearly :-) but how would I know if that was the case? My satellite image is made of odd oblong blocks of various sizes showing what look like rocks/snow/ice etc then I switch to map and it might have just the sea in the same place or at least land masses of very different shapes to the sat views
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I'm not sure if yours is doing the same, but mine is swapping from a 3D rendered view to a Mercator projection when moving between Sat and Map views. Could this be the issue? Or part of it?
I'm not technically gifted (clearly :-) but how would I know if that was the case? My satellite image is made of odd oblong blocks of various sizes showing what look like rocks/snow/ice etc then I switch to map and it might have just the sea in the same place or at least land masses of very different shapes to the sat views
Try zooming out a bit and swapping back and forth. I go from seeing the top image here, to seeing the bottom image. Top is Sat, bottom is Map. https://imgur.com/a/WzLUr
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Ok that's better, Cheers CS. Zooming out makes it match a lot better. Still weird that it goes so odd closer up mind baring in mind it doesn't do that over a town but I guess Google didn't need to get the details as exact, plus the ice/snow moves a lot more than the urban environment....
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The problem is that Google do most of their photographic work with airplanes - and it's very hard to fly over the Antarctic because of the horrendous weather and the danger should you need to land urgently.
It's easy to forget that Antarctica is HUGE - it's an entire continent...so there isn't good photographic imagery for much of it.
Hence most of what Google show is satellite photography.
But in their mission to "Do the best they can" with the data they have, they show airplane photography when they can - and satellite when they can't get airplane shots.
This causes one kind of "patchiness" - the other kind is caused by the fact that not all of their airplane photos were taken at the same time - some of them will be years old, some much more recent. But because the weather changes - and (especially) because the ice floes are changing continuously - you often get very visible lines between photos taken at different times.
Another problem (which you sometimes see even in photos taken over big cities and such) is that the airplane doesn't take all of the photos at the same exact time of day - so the shadows are often different and seem to "jump" as they switch images. They have a ton of software that tries to fix these anomalies - but it can't ever be perfect.
As a general rule - the less inhabited and area is, the less good photography they have to present - and therefore the worse the appearance on their web page.