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"Bird's Eye" imagery now available for Greenville on Live Search Maps


cartophile

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Yesterday I noticed that "Bird's Eye" imagery is now available for Greenville and the surrounding areas on Live Search Maps. Coverage goes approximately south as far as Donaldson Center, west as far as Graceland Cemetery, north as far as Hillandale Golf Course, and then following a corridor along I-85 past Spartanburg to a point just beyond the Cherokee County line. Now if you want to tell an out-of-town friend how amazing Liberty Bridge, Falls Park, West End Field, etc. are, you can point him to a whole new vantage point.

For those unfamiliar with this, a company called Pictometry generates oblique aerial imagery, which gives a vastly different look than the (approximately) straight overhead view of the now-familiar satellite imagery that's widely available. In Spring, 2006, Microsoft began adding this imagery for selected areas to their online mapping service. Being one who can entertain himself for hours just panning around getting a new perspective on familiar and unfamiliar locales, I check frequently to see which areas have imagery newly available. Sometime this past Summer I got my first "bird's eye" look at European cities. I've been checking regularly to see when Greenville would be added.

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This Bird's Eye feature is really cool! I like how vivid and colorful the images are. A few observations:

1. RiverPlace looks awesome!

2. Falls Park is very impressive looking.

3. We have a LOT more surface lots and open lots downtown than I ever realized. Yikes! Hopefully, over time, those will be filled in with developments. Pinnacle on Main, Gateway site, Peacock Hotel & Spa, and the Palmetto Bank headquarters are a good start.

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Yesterday I noticed that "Bird's Eye" imagery is now available for Greenville and the surrounding areas on Live Search Maps. Coverage goes approximately south as far as Donaldson Center, west as far as Graceland Cemetery, north as far as Hillandale Golf Course, and then following a corridor along I-85 past Spartanburg to a point just beyond the Cherokee County line. Now if you want to tell an out-of-town friend how amazing Liberty Bridge, Falls Park, West End Field, etc. are, you can point him to a whole new vantage point.

For those unfamiliar with this, a company called Pictometry generates oblique aerial imagery, which gives a vastly different look than the (approximately) straight overhead view of the now-familiar satellite imagery that's widely available. In Spring, 2006, Microsoft began adding this imagery for selected areas to their online mapping service. Being one who can entertain himself for hours just panning around getting a new perspective on familiar and unfamiliar locales, I check frequently to see which areas have imagery newly available. Sometime this past Summer I got my first "bird's eye" look at European cities. I've been checking regularly to see when Greenville would be added.

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I don't know about the frequency of updates. I was ready to say not to expect any updates at all, since I've never taken note of any, but then I thought I should check around some more first. I went straight to the Mall and the site of the WWII Memorial. I'm almost certain that when I first saw the Bird's Eye view for DC there was just a hole in the ground. Now, there are a bunch of cranes and a good bit of the memorial is in place.

Two things to note...

  • The imagery, at least in places, can be way outdated. For instance, the WWII Memorial opened in April, 2004; so even this "updated" imagery is four years old. I was actually a bit surprised to see a completed West End Field in Greenville.

  • Sometimes one can stumble upon areas where adjacent tiles depict an area at different times. The Census Bureau's new building (where I work) can be seen here - all shiny and new. But if you pan east just a bit, you'll get a view of the parking lot that used to be where the building now stands.

A project that might be of interest to some on this forum - given your expertise in these matters - is to ascertain when the images of Greenville were taken. I actually found a message in which someone stated he and his friends had discovered the exact day that some aerial imagery of Munich was taken. They were able to narrow down to a few weeks based on some major sporting event going on, the day of the week based on activity at some street market, etc., etc. I would think that based on this group's collective knowledge of local construction projects, you could figure it out within a month or so just based on that.

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I can date that almost to the day if I really wanted to try. My house is about to start construction, with the lot leveled, and the neighbor's house is framed up.

That puts it right about exactly a year old. Maybe a hair less. I'm going mid Jan - 07. At least on the looking west picture of the west end.

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