On current images used in Google Maps, people appear as indistinguishable dots (see red circle, lower right). The new images promise to be as good as or better than this one (inset) taken over The Hague in the Netherlands.
Here's a chance to make a spectacle of yourself in front of the whole world on Australia Day.
On Friday, an aircraft hired by Google will be doing a series of low-level swoops over parts of Sydney, photographing the ground and waters below.
The three-seater plane, decked out in Google livery, will have special permission to fly at an altitude of 600m.
Providing the photographs turn out to be good enough quality, the images will be integrated into Google Maps, the free online mapping service used by millions of people around the world.
Usually, people aren't aware when they are caught in aerial photographs that later end up being used in Google Maps. This time however Google actually wants Sydneysiders to do whatever they can to make themselves visible.
The company is encouraging people to wear something distinctive, hold up a sign (face-up), draw in the sand, or even arrange themselves into a "fun formation".
According to Mr Lars Rasmussen, head of engineering for Google Australia and one of the lead engineers for Google Maps, the images will be the highest resolution available on the popular mapping service.
He said the images will add a "few more zoom levels" to the local maps and be between three to four times more detailed than are currently available for Australian terrain on Google Maps.
That would put them on par or better than the Google Map images of the Netherlands where, for instance, one of the aerial photographs shows a woman in a swimsuit sunbathing on the balcony of a low-rise block of units.
The best available resolution images on Australian aerial images allows you to see cars clearly, but people are generally visible as pinpricks on the photos.
"This is the first time we have tried this on any scale," said Mr Rasmussen, one of the original developers of Google Maps, who is based in Sydney. "We have no idea whether it will work, but we thought it'd be fun to try."
The plane is scheduled to begin flying over Centennial and Moore parks at 9am from where it will head out to Bronte Beach. The flight will zig-zag it's way across the inner east, the city, Harbour and the lower North Shore, ending at about 2.15pm.
Google says the experiment will depend on fine, clear weather and that the flyover times may vary depending on prevailing conditions.
A map with times of the flyover can be found at http://www.google.com.au/australiaday2007/ and will will be updated with any changes to the schedule on the morning of January 26.
The images, however, will take up to another six weeks to make it on to Google Maps.
"It's a bit of an experiment and if it's a success, we'll probably do it in other places [around the world]," Mr Rasmussen said, indicating that Google would work on organising similar flyovers in places like Paris on Bastille Day or over cities in the United States on Independence Day.
...from smh
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