On 10/21/04 at 9:26 AM Chris Metzler wrote:
>On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:24:45 +0200 >Boris Koenig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Chris Metzler wrote: >> > [...] >> > The "Urban Areas"/"T=4" dataset is fabulous, btw -- it goes down to >> > 25cm resolution (TaxiDraw fetches 1 meter resolution images, it >> > appears). I'd recommend just changing fetch.cpp to "T=4", and getting >> > the highest resolution images available; but not all areas are covered >> > by the better dataset. That's why I'm recommending tests -- try to >> > fetch from the higher resolution dataset, and drop down to the >> > lower-res one if the first fetch fails. >> >> LOL, sounds as if Chris has hacked terraserver.com to provide him with >> their payware imagery for free ;-) > >Oh man, I don't know if I explained this well enough. > >The stuff on terraserver-usa.com (as opposed to terraserver.com -- same >company, different website), including the images I fetched, are >all free through the web interface. Try it out with the browser of your >choice; you'll see it all just by clicking on links. Before, >terraserer-usa only had one dataset of free aerial images. Now they >have a second, which improves coverage in U.S. urban areas. > Yes, to clarify, terraserver-usa.com IS NOT THE SAME SITE as terraserver.com. terraserver-usa.com includes the following copyright statement: "The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides the Microsoft® TerraServer site with images and maps of the United States. The images are in the public domain, and are freely available for you to download, use and re-distribute. If you download and use any images, the TerraServer team and the USGS appreciate a reference to our work on this project." The TaxiDraw website includes a thank-you to both USGS and Microsoft Research, so we're following both the letter and the spirit of the law here. Terraserver-usa.com even includes a reference to a programming api to interface to the site (but it's dot-net so I didn't use it), and at least one other site has had an alternative front end to their images up for several years now with no apparent problems. TaxiDraw has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with terraserver.com, only terraserver-usa.com. This is directed at others, not Chris, who obviously knows the score. As Chris says, terraserver-usa.com now includes free colour USGS images to many (I haven't checked this, just going on Chris' post) urban areas, which include many airports. These are presumably easier to work against and more up-to-date than the b/w images. When I coded TaxiDraw they only had Seattle in colour, so I didn't bother adding support. I will eventually add support for these, but my current priority for the image code is to use the cross-platform cURL library and work with the images in pieces as downloaded (instead of tiling them with ImageMagick) so that Windows users can also benefit from this. Working with tiles should improve program response when zoomed in on a small portion of the image as well. I won't be including any support whatsoever for downloading images that don't have an unequivocal copyright statement allowing unrestricted use of the images similar to the above, have no fear of that. I probably will put some safeguards in the program to avoid downloading excessively large areas, but for now I trust that users will use it responsibly! Cheers - Dave This message has been scanned but we cannot guarantee that it and any attachments are free from viruses or other damaging content: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation. _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
