Bing Maps vs. Google Maps imagery?

[Badfish740]

At least for the areas I tend to study the most (the NJ Highlands), I've begun to notice something. The imagery Bing maps has for the area was collected during the late fall or winter (no leaves on the trees), and the imagery Google has was taken during late spring or summer (full foliage)-is there some reason for this? Google tends to have more detail in terms of property boundaries and labeling (ie: state park lands tend to be labeled, unpaved roads and hiking trails tend to be highlighted), but I can often find unmapped roads using Bing images that otherwise are undetectable in Google-here's an example:

Bing:

Google:

 

[Boyd]

That Bing image looks a lot like the NJDEP 2007 orthoimagery - have you compared it to the 2007 imagery here at NJPB? Since it is available for free, many companies use it. We've discussed this in relation to Garmin's Birdseye product. In the past they used the NJ 2007 imagery but apparently they recently switched to another source that is more similar to your Google screenshot. Here's the metadata for the NJ 2007 imagery: https://njgin.state.nj.us/NJ_NJGINE...?docId={DC1F4E29-28A5-11DB-9EFE-0003BA2C919E}

Multi-spectral digital orthophotography was produced at a scale of 1:2400 (1"=200') with a 1 foot pixel resolution for The State of New Jersey totaling approximately 8,162 square miles. A redelivery of major urban areas in 2009 incorporates off-axis-flight images captured in 2007 and 2008.

Digital orthophotography combines the image characteristics of a photograph with the geometric qualities of a map. Digital orthophotography is a process which converts a digitized perspective aerial photograph or other remotely sensed image data to a digital product that has been rectified for camera lens distortion, vertical displacement caused by terrain relief and variations in aircraft altitude and orientation.

Aerial photography of the entire State of New Jersey was captured during March-May, 2007. Two flight dates (4-30-07 and 5-3-07) were rejected from the original 2007 flight due to excessive leaf conditions. Spring 2008 re-flights were planned and acquired in three missions dating: April 3rd, 10th and 15th of 2008. The final orthophotos for parts of Warren, Hunterdon, Sussex, Passaic, Essex, Union and all of Bergen and Hudson Counties were created utilizing both years of imagery.

Note that they re-shot some of the NJ2007 imagery because the tree canopy was too heavy. I have to say, we have a real wealth of free geodata available from our state. As mentioned in another thread, I am working with this 2007 dataset now myself. And it has a companion dataset of Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) where they have manually traced the outlines of everything on the map and classified it by vegetation type or usage. Pretty cool stuff.

You can directly download all the NJDEP imagery yourself for free. Typically it is available at higher resolution (1 foot per pixel) than you get on the web (shows more details that you see here at NJPB for example). Here's a link, although it might require a somewhat lengthy explanation if you aren't familar with the process.

https://njgin.state.nj.us/NJ_NJGINExplorer/IW.jsp

Google and Bing use a variety of sources for imagery, there should be some copyright notices shown somewhere on the screen. Aside from being shot in the winter, the NJ 2007 imagery was taken from airplanes and not satellites. In my experience, this is a big plus since they aren't shot through so much atmosphere.

Digital Globe is arguably the biggest provider of satellite imagery (Garmin uses them).

 

[Badfish740]

Boyd-once again you amaze me! I checked out the site and downloading the imagery is no problem but viewing it is. Any recommendations on free software for viewing JPEG2000 files? Also, is there a way to view multiple files at once since large areas are split up into tiles?

 

[Boyd]

It really depends on your ultimate goal. If you just want to view them on your computer, use the Globalmapper free trial: http://www.globalmapperforum.com/download/

It is very powerful GIS software - I use it for all my map making. It's rather expensive to purchase though. But the free version does almost everything although you cannot export data. If you create a folder and place the downloaded .zip files in it, use the Globalmapper File > Open all files in a directory tree menu to select the folder. It will open them all and create separate layers for each (like layers in Photoshop). You don't even need to unzip the files, Globalmapper will extract the data it needs from them.

Another really powerful command is File > Download Online Imagery. It can fill the screen with data from many different sources, including the NJGIN servers (same Ben is using for NJPB maps) and only takes a few mouse clicks. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if you can do that in the free version.

But Globalmapper can open almost any kind of geodata files you find on the web. So if you only want to look at stuff, the free version is great. And if you have a big monitor, a screenshot may be good enough for many things.

It used to be that they would give you a free 30 day trial key that unlocks all the features. Not sure if this is still available. IIRC, Al got one of those and spent the next month downloading and processing as much of the NJ imagery as he could.

 

[Ben Ruset]

What's cool is that NJPB Maps will let you toggle between the Google Map view that I have for most of the imagery and then also give you a link to open the same area in another map such as Bing. So you can have the best of both worlds.

 

[Teegate]

What's cool is that NJPB Maps will let you toggle between the Google Map view that I have for most of the imagery and then also give you a link to open the same area in another map such as Bing. So you can have the best of both worlds.

That feature is hidden away somewhat and I keep forgetting about it.

 

[Ben Ruset]

If I made things perfect then there'd be nothing to improve upon.