[HN Gopher] Buy Hi-Resolution Satellite Images of Any Place on E... ___________________________________________________________________ Buy Hi-Resolution Satellite Images of Any Place on Earth Author : for_i_in_range Score : 324 points Date : 2023-01-21 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.skyfi.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.skyfi.com) | technological wrote: | What is the usecase for common man ? I cannot think of anything, | so asking to understand how one will use it. | | Thanks and awesome website | [deleted] | kickout wrote: | Very cool. Always interested in these hi-res photos for | agricultural field monitoring. A little pricey though. | | ETA: 5 sq km seems big for a minimum. Multispectral availability | is super cool tho! | mckeed wrote: | Cool, I was wondering if this would be useful for farmers. | Could you share more info on how multispectral images would be | used? | lukefischer wrote: | Well with SAR you can get moisture content of soil which can | help with crop yields. Right now third parties do this for ag | work but our goal is to have integrated analytics cause | really a farmer doesn't care about the imagery he or she | cares about crop yields...that's what we are solving for. | aliljet wrote: | I've long wondered why we couldn't start collecting pure drone | footage for this kind of data. Literally decentralize the | collection of overhead imagery. | kbaker wrote: | https://openaerialmap.org/ exists! | aliljet wrote: | Wait, how can I start sending my drone footage to them? This | is cool? | lukefischer wrote: | We have a couple drone partners...I'm a big drone fan (ran | the experiment while at Uber Elevate) and want to have | every drone hobbyist be able to upload their data and get | paid (probably a small chunk but size based) as long as it | can be geo rectified | lukefischer wrote: | It's on our roadmap. Imagery and data from all sources | heliodor wrote: | I picked an area. The preview low-res image seems to indicate | that they are happy to sell me pictures of clouds! | ritwikgupta wrote: | That's just the part of the equation when using electro-optical | imagery. You're paying to task a satellite, not necessarily a | clear picture. To me this will be an interesting test for | SkyFi. Casual customers just expect to see the ground when they | "buy an image" and giving them clouds will put them off from | using the service further. | jvanderbot wrote: | You can select maximum cloud cover in the resulting image, | over a month long imaging window. They predict cloud cover to | task satellites. It's kind of the dual problem to "get me and | image on this date" | heliodor wrote: | I understand that for new images but for existing images I | expect them to stack multiple images into a cloud-free image, | just like Google Maps does. Otherwise, at least calculate the | cloud cover and discount me the money proportionally. | thfuran wrote: | >at least calculate the cloud cover and discount me the | money proportionally. | | That makes sense if you can figure out how to get food to | duplicate their satellites. | lukefischer wrote: | Really depends on the use cases but I understand. You can | adjust cloud settings in the advanced tab, by default its | 20%. You could go down to 0%. We won't charge you if the | clouds are above what you specify. | lukefischer wrote: | When we get more supply there will be more options. Just | getting started here. | [deleted] | aendruk wrote: | Does this allow me to use purchased images as a reference for | OpenStreetMap contributions? Or even better, donate them to | OpenStreetMap for other contributors to reference? | | Occasionally the available imagery around important features is | too outdated (e.g. completed construction of public | infrastructure) and I'd love to be able to fund a prioritized | update. | lucb1e wrote: | I read elsewhere in the thread that the license allows | basically anything, provided that you aren't making money and | that you give credit. The latter is the hard part. Would a | source=... tag on the object be enough? Or does anyone using | that part of the OSM map need to be made aware that this | contains data based on skyfi? There are no methods currently | for doing the latter. | lesquivemeau wrote: | Is it just me or is the "very high res" sample less detailled | than the preview on the map ? | denlekke wrote: | 48 hours from new image capture to being able to download it. | didn't see info on the time between requesting a new image and | how soon it can be captured | lukefischer wrote: | We aim to be faster. It'll increase with more supply | nly wrote: | The "high resolution" 50cm option wasn't even available in my | area of the UK. Lame. | lukefischer wrote: | This is our first entry to the market, agree it's not ideal you | can't get it but working on amping up supply as quick as we | can. | jofer wrote: | What's interesting to me is that the pricing isn't that unique. | That's pretty normal for a list price. $7 sq km + 25 sq km min | (basically the size of the image). | | That's probably because they're (I think?) buying tasking | capacity from other companies, so the pricing can't be below the | rate they negotiate. That probably results in then negotiating a | below list price from a few companies and then setting prices | that wind up being close to the average list price for the | industry. | | The difference is two very key things: 1) no minimum overall buy | 2) fully public pricing | | That price is pretty normal, but usually you have to commit to at | least a few thousand dollars worth. 25 sq km min per target is | also pretty normal, but the contracts usually require you | committing to at least a few hundred of those. | | Next is public list pricing. Every company has list pricing, and | that's basically what smaller customers will pay. Large customers | negotiate it down, of course. But just explicitly advertising the | list pricing is also a big deal and not normally done. It's | usually way too hidden. | | A lot of folks (hi there Joe) have been pushing for more | transparency in pricing, and a lot of companies have been talking | about chasing the "long tail" of small customers for a long time, | but it's really good to see someone actually doing it. | LeifCarrotson wrote: | It is! So many people (both potential large customers and that | long tail of small customers) will not click "contact a sales | associate" and just leave when you won't say how much a thing | costs. | | Even just a ballpark is helpful. As an industrial engineer, I | deal with this all the time - I don't have time to go to lunch | with you and talk about one of 300 components on my machine, | but is your fancy gizmo worth it? When the tech specs are | public PDFs, that's great, when they're locked behind an | account creation email flow to spam me later, that sucks (and | you'll get a company disposable email), when the account | doesn't get created until your sales rep looks at my company | website to estimate how much money you can take us for, it's | too late; I've already designed in something else. And what's | the price difference between the standard and deluxe models? Is | it 20%, or a factor of 3? If your product is moderately | compelling but has public pricing, you're in the running, if I | have to wait for a quote you'd better be really compelling. | | I might be one of those long tail customers for SkyFi, my Dad's | birthday is coming up and I think he'd love a print of a | satellite photo of his cottage on the lake up north...it needs | to be better than Google Maps, but I'd never make it through a | manual sales pipeline. | roamerz wrote: | This. I evaluate lots of software in my position. If you | don't post at least ballpark pricing on your public webpage | and you do not have a feature I cannot live without I'm | talking to one of your competitors that does. Every time. | lukefischer wrote: | 100% agree, nobody wants to contact sales so I outlawed | that. Easy decision | bookofjoe wrote: | Concur. This is so obvious to me I do not understand why | not posting a price -- no matter what it is -- is still | considered good business practice. Perhaps once upon a time | before the internet but no longer. | blowski wrote: | It's not that they have a fixed price they're not sharing | with you. They want to estimate how much you'll pay first | - look at Crunchbase, etc. | | I'm not saying it's a good idea but there are plenty of | smart cookies who seem to think it maximises revenue. | | If you want to counteract, have a shitty little startup | with no funding and ask for the quote for them. | roamerz wrote: | That's probably a valid point. I would liken that to car | lots but most of them at least publicly post a starting | price. I guess it's no wonder why I instinctively steer | clear. | tshaddox wrote: | I suspect it's primarily a mix of three things. The first | is price discrimination, like you mention. The second is | wanting to have some control over the sales process | (price anchoring, tempering sticker stock, etc.). The | third is related to the second: focusing inbound sales | efforts by subtly communicating that "if you have to ask, | you can't afford it" for a large chunk of price-sensitive | customers. | lukefischer wrote: | anytime you hear "custom quote" it means a sales person | is try to maximize his or her value out of you | roamerz wrote: | When in fact the opposite should be true. How can I as a | company maximize my value to you. This is the type of | companies I choose to partner with. | lukefischer wrote: | its a backwards system and then when you combine sales | teams that are commission based how can anyone | realistically expect to get a fair price when a human's | pay is based on getting as high a price as possible | roamerz wrote: | And the 4th is once I see those sorts of sales tactics I | know what kind of people run that company and I am not | interested in associating with them. Principal matters. | blowski wrote: | A more positive spin would be that richer companies are | subsidising poorer ones. | Turing_Machine wrote: | Yep. To me (and, I suspect, plenty of others) "call for | pricing" = "call so one of our trained manipulators can | figure out how to screw you out of as much money as | possible". | teamskyfi wrote: | The pricing page on our website is just the start. If you | visit the desktop or download the mobile app | (https://www.skyfi.com/download-app), you will see that we | have dynamic pricing in-app. As you change the size of your | area of interest (AOI), the price immediately changes. We are | 100% focused on the UX for the end-user and will work hard to | keep the purchasing process seamless. User feedback like | these conversations is helpful. | LegitShady wrote: | I'm not going to download and install your app to discover | pricing either. There's a fair chance you can't get me to | install your app ever, and the more of your service is tied | to it, the less likely I am to use your service at all. | int_19h wrote: | Their website has similar functionality where you can | highlight an area on the map and it immediately tells you | how much the photo will cost, updating the price as you | tweak options. | CPLX wrote: | > I might be one of those long tail customers for SkyFi, my | Dad's birthday is coming up and I think he'd love a print of | a satellite photo of his cottage on the lake up north ...it | needs to be better than Google Maps | | It's not, it's drastically worse than Google Maps, not even | comparable. | | That was my use case as well, I bought images (at the highest | offered resolution) of my house upstate and the place I got | married, thinking they'd be nice little framed items, and | they're completely unusable. | | Google maps is probably 10-50x sharper. It's a confusing | product. I guess there's a use case of tracking a something | like how many warehouses your competitor has built, or | avalanches, or forest fires, or all sorts of time sensitive | things, but I feel like they could do a way better job of | actually explaining what they are actually selling. | [deleted] | int_19h wrote: | Google Maps uses aerial photos past a certain level of | magnification, if it is available in a given area, even if | it's still labelled as "satellite". | | If you compare areas where there are no such photos - e.g. | large natural parks - the hi-res samples on their website | don't look any worse to me than Google. | toss1 wrote: | >> will not click "contact a sales associate" and just leave | when you won't say how much a thing costs. | | THIS!! | | Having run small businesses in several technology industries, | I cannot emphasize how much this is true. | | I very well understand that pricing can be complex. | | But if you cannot give me even an order of magnitude as to | whether your prices are even remotely feasible for me or my | customer's project, I likely don't have the time or | motivation to find out. | | Yes, I get it, you think your likelihood of sales is better | if I talk to someone and they can pitch me on how wonderful | your stuff is. | | Bullshirt. Maybe one in 500 times is that true. You are | wasting my time and yours. | | And, no this is not a filter to weed out the small players. | My small shops have done work for anything from individuals | to the largest multinational corps and governments. If your | product is a fit, I can get the budget. But putting in that | kind of wall is just offputting. | | This is very much like how the real estate industry used to | treat the address of a property as a state secret, as if | nothing is ever a 'drive-by', the sale will be lost if they | can't talk with the customer, blah, blah, blah. Then the dam | finally broke, and now they all put addresses and maps, and | guess what? They save themselves tons of time because the | buyers self-qualify! They check out the places themselves, | and only call when it already looks like a good fit. | | Sales and marketing types really can get stuck in naive wrong | ideas for decades... | Sebb767 wrote: | > It is! So many people (both potential large customers and | that long tail of small customers) will not click "contact a | sales associate" and just leave when you won't say how much a | thing costs. | | Yes! Especially since 'contact us' can usually be translated | as 'not financially viable for a private person' (or even | small company). | | Even if pricing is not easy to say (like for companies doing | custom car mods etc.), at least a rough idea or example | projects with their costs help to know whether you could | reasonably afford something. | Gemoto wrote: | My team has 7 people and my company has 100.000 employees. | | My budget as that single team is not 'just getting the | company credit card out and paying 5k / year for some | services I wanna use'. | | I'm pretty sure this type of practice is just stupid and we | do see how much easier it is to just be allowed to click a | VM on was, gcp and co in comparison to all of these | 'contactnus for pricing shit'. | teamskyfi wrote: | Can you elaborate on what you'd like to see? | jjeaff wrote: | Not op, but I'm sure, like many people, are saying they | would like to see advertised, upfront pricing. | rmason wrote: | I started out doing aerial infrared photography for farmers in | 1983 when it meant storing film in the refrigerator and renting | a Cessna. Then in the nineties I moved on to buying satellite | photos. | | But there was a fundamental disconnect between how a fertilizer | company wanted to buy photos and how the satellite company | wanted to sell them. We ideally wanted to buy them by the | field, the section or township at worst. The satellite company | wanted to sell you a 'scene' which was 10-12 counties. Most | farmers trying technology as a test would give you 5-10% of | their acreage. Try telling your boss you wanted to buy photos | where you weren't going to use 99%+ of them. | | Then to make it worse here in Michigan it is quite cloudy. You | get your photos and 50-60% of them are ruined by cloud cover. | When it worked the photos were a godsend. Getting three or four | flyovers a season allowed you to spot trends as well. | | I personally think drones will win the ag market. What I wanted | to do back in the nineties was launch a drone from the county | airport and have it automatically fly to a given set of gps | coordinates and return at nighttime. Cost is lower, I don't | have to buy any extra photos that I don't want and because its | below the clouds all the photos are useable. | | But back then the technology didn't exist. But the tech has | been there since 2010. Since 2015 its been possible to fly | around other planes in the sky and geofence fields near | airports. But the FAA won't grant permission, even for tests. I | know at least two Michigan startups that went broke waiting and | I suspect there are many more. So for now you have no choice | but try using satellite companies. As a result the market is | 1-2% of what it could be. | larsiusprime wrote: | What about balloons? Have you seen Urban Sky? | https://www.urbansky.com | | (I'm not affiliated with them, fwiw) | rmason wrote: | Interesting idea if you aren't dealing with a heavy cloud | cover like say Iowa or Illinois this might work. For taking | pictures in a city this could be really useful. | | But if you have to stay below the cloud cover you're going | to probably cover no more than a township(?) at a time. If | I have to send a guy out in a pickup who launches, grabs a | photo, pulls it back in and then drives to the next | township it is slow and expensive. | hammock wrote: | > here in Michigan it is quite cloudy. You get your photos | and 50-60% of them are ruined by cloud cover | | Why would an aerial photo plane fly when it's cloudy? Makes | no sense. | | Edit: downvote me some more. Seems pretty clear that it would | be important for an outfit to schedule and run flights on | 80%+ clear days or at least days with high ceilings.. not 50% | or less days | jofer wrote: | With that said, I'm still very skeptical that there's enough | revenue in the "long tail" of small customers to make a viable | satellite imaging company. Please prove me wrong there! | brookst wrote: | Hello jofer! I couldn't help noticing your red 2017 Subaru | Crosstrek was out in your driveway all winter, and probably | needs a spring detail. We're running a special this week! | | We've also identified signs of water damage on your roof, | which was last replaced 22 years ago according to public | records. Our local affiliate will provide a repair estimate | free of cost, and we'll throw in a discount on the car | detail. | anlsh wrote: | I think I'm going to vomit :( | layer8 wrote: | Don't do that outside though! You'll get ads for | gastrointestinal medication. | jofer wrote: | Good luck recognizing that level of detail! This isn't that | type of imagery. You can tell just barely tell a truck from | a car and can definitely tell the color of the vehicle, but | that's about it. You're describing 1cm imagery from drones, | not satellite imagery. | | Regardless, insurance companies are big customers for | similar reasons. Recognizing swimming pools in imagery is | tougher than you'd think, but a classic thing (and real) | that gets brought up is your insurance company raising your | rates because you put in a pool and didn't tell them. | Insurance companies would love to (and sometimes do) detect | that from satellite imagery instead of boots on the ground. | | Either way, those are big companies / big contracts, rather | than individuals buying imagery directly. | GasTrader wrote: | Actually the roof example can be done at scale cheap | enough for a local contractor to market. I'd use | hyperspectral but 30 cm optical might work in sure 10cm | would. Thanks for the suggestion! | heliodor wrote: | In Puerto Rico, roofs are flat and get dirty within a few | months. You absolutely can easily determine when it was | last powerwashed as well as when it was last sealed. | | Sealing will leave you with a pure white roof for about a | month or two. Powerwashing will leave you will light to | medium gray. They'll turn dark gray to black within a few | months in the parts where the water pools. | oakwhiz wrote: | It's different for dyed sealant, but there is a time | while the work is being done where old sections are | stripped back and the new material is drying. Lots of | false positives from HVAC work etc. though. | lukefischer wrote: | A frequent comment we get is "there's no consumer market | cause it's been tried before"...false. Of course there has | not been a consumer adoption because you have to buy huge | chunks of earth, enter a contract for 5-6 figures, and the | whole process takes months and months. Previous business | model before we started was like Uber saying, "contact sales | if you want a ride and they'll get you a custom quote for the | year with a minimum price of $10,000". Uber would've lasted a | couple weeks with that mindset. So why has the EO industry | persisted, cause there has been no other options and the Govt | has been the largest spender. | lukefischer wrote: | we are STARTING with satellite imagery. drones, airplanes, | stratospheric balloons are all in our partnerships. also | partnering with analytic companies. | hammock wrote: | I want ultra high res for art. Can't wait | AlotOfReading wrote: | Depending on what you consider "viable", there's the | potential for a few hundred every couple months from | archaeologists (I used to be one). Every working | archaeologist needs high resolution imagery as cheaply as | possible on a fairly regular basis. | jofer wrote: | Oh, agreed! There's definitely a market there. A lot of my | friends are archaeologists (I'm a geologist), and I've | heard many stories of "if only I could get your company to | sell me imagery instead of blowing me off because we can't | buy enough". Similarly, my mom was a mine inspector for | years (mostly open gravel pits). This sort of imagery would | have saved her state department a ton in travel costs, as | most of the "boots on the ground" checks were "did a ton of | gravel make it into the creek downstream after that big | rain". You still have to go out there for water | samples/etc, but just getting up to date info on large | scale runoff is huge, as you can get out there before the | mine can hide the event or claim it didn't come from them. | | The issue, historically, is that these cases didn't make | for large enough contracts for an imaging company to work | with. Would you rather chase one $2 billion contract or | 1000 $1000 contracts? (No, the amounts aren't the same | either -- that's the point.) | | It's not that the demand isn't there, it's that most | companies focus exclusively on the very large contracts, as | they're more lucrative. | teamskyfi wrote: | SkyFi team here. We did fight hard to make the minimum size of | the image lower than current industry standards. Many use cases | don't need large swaths and it helps bring down the minimum | price - making it more accessible. We also have one individual | EULA for all of our data providers which is not currently | standard for the industry. We are working on leading the Earth | observation industry towards transparent pricing. It makes it a | lot easier for the customer, which is our primary focus. | tomjen3 wrote: | It is pretty cool and I was looking for a picture of my | grandparents place as a gift they wouldn't buy since they | don't know it can be made, but the mininum 5k area neglects | that purpose. They aren't technical at all, but the idea that | something so advanced as a satellite could take a picture of | their house would blow their minds. | | I completely understand if my request is impossible, but at | least one other commenter mentioned this idea in the thread, | and I think it would be a pretty common thing. | | One other point. Would it be possible to subscribe to an area | and get notified when photos become available? | | Actually a final point: on the website it mentions the | technical resolution of the images. Could you have one | example of each size photo that I can see? 500cm doesn't | really mean anything to me, nor does multispectural. | GasTrader wrote: | An existing image that is recent may cost 20 to 30 bucks at | 5sqkm. Perhaps that would work. Existing images might only | be a week old. | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | Why is the 5 sqkm min area a problem? If you're getting 1 | px per meter, it doesn't matter how much irrelevant area | gets captured around your area of interest (and existing | imagery prices are low enough that it shouldn't be a | problem). | | That said, I suspect Google Maps and other public mapping | services likely already have higher resolution pictures. | Like you said, I also can't really imagine much under the | "100 cm" description, but zooming in on a random place of | middle-of-nowhere, Alaska, I can clearly make out the | triangular shape of tree shadows that measure around 6 | meters length-wise, so I assume the resolution is better | than "100 cm". Middle-of-nowhere Siberia was worse, but in | a random 360 people village I could clearly distinguish | left and right tire tracks. | | I only see very few benefits a service selling historical | pictures would provide for curiosity/novelty/hobbyist use | cases - specific times (including newer imagery) that | aren't available in the Google Earth history, getting the | picture officially and without watermarks rather than | having to screenshot or otherwise extract it, and maybe | some edge cases in terms of areas covered. | | Being able to request a _new_ picture is much more | interesting, but I suspect at the resolutions available, it | won 't be too useful either (edit: again - for | curiosity/novelty/hobbyist use cases, for which pricing | will also be a big hurdle). | amelius wrote: | What are people using these images for? Just curious. | lukefischer wrote: | we could talk all day about use cases...trading, agriculture, | real estate, insurance, curiosity, reporting, etc etc etc | gist wrote: | I was not able to find a way to see (prior to purchase) the age | of the stock image (is that info on the site?). Also if you order | a new image how do you know it will be taken when no clouds (or | is that just obvious they only take when not obstructed (and by | how much)? | divvyy wrote: | This is a horrendous privacy violation. Being able to purchase | high resolution, newly-created images of arbitrary locations is | way over the line of an acceptable offering. This will be used to | stalk and harass individuals. There's no mention on their website | of how they plan to prevent this type of intrusive surveillance | either. | | Loads of people complain about the NSA's bulk data collection for | the purposes of national security, but we barely see any | opposition to bulk aerial surveillance imaging such as this, | despite it being even more of a privacy breach due lack of | safeguards around who can obtain and exploit such data. | version_five wrote: | Others have pointed out that this is already possible. This | offering seems to be more targeted at small scale or personal | use, which I think is the least concerning. | | Google street view already exists as well, and I can, for not | much more than this service costs, go pretty much anywhere | within a few thousand km and look at something. | | What we should be concerned about is large scale corporate uses | of this data, which have been going on for years. For example, | insurance companies or municipalities using satellite images to | see if you make any changes to your property. Or license plate | scanners for that matter. | | Without dwelling on it, governments and companies want to apply | our new ability to record everything always to a system of laws | that were written when you couldn't. Laws and rules are | flexible in how and when they are enforced for a reason, and | any benefit from new surveillance accrues only to the | government or company. | bookofjoe wrote: | That ship sailed a long, long time ago. | divvyy wrote: | That doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about services that | launch even more of such ships. | | This offering is a stalker's delight. The only thing that | would make it worse is if they paid people to turn up to a | specified location and take photos, like some sort of Uber | for creeps. | | At minimum, they should have a form where you can opt out of | having your home included in this sold imagery. Better would | be to notify all property owners and dwellers within a | photographed region that the imagery has been purchased, with | an option to opt-out. Best of all would be if everyone being | photographed had to opt-in before a sale could be made. That | would be a company taking privacy seriously rather than | trying to profit from breaching it in bulk. | heliodor wrote: | We also have private investigators walking by the front of | your house. This is no different. | crazygringo wrote: | You've always been able to hire a pilot to take photos from a | small plane, for much of the populated earth. | | This isn't any different. Just cheaper and easier. | | Nobody has any expectation of privacy from the sky, any more | than they do from a public street. | | Also, I'm not sure taking a single photo at some arbitrary time | over the next few days is particularly useful or cost-effective | for "stalking". | divvyy wrote: | That was problematic too. Making such surveillance imagery | even more easily obtainable is even worse, especially | considering the power of gathering multiple sets of data and | correlating the findings. It doesn't have to be a single | photo, a stalker could purchase multiple photos of multiple | locations of interest on a regular basis. | | In terms of potential harm, it's like the difference between | a handgun and nuclear bomb. | GasTrader wrote: | Hello,SkyFI founder and majority share holder. Satellite | imagery as a stalking tool is more science fiction/ fantasy | for a number of reasons. | | 1. Resolution just isn't sharp enough and never will be to | discern individual persons identity. | | 2. Latency, it takes time to upload an order the order. | Satellite has to pass iber a groundstation to receive | command,then be in pistion to take photo then pass iver | ground station to download. Then go to post processing, QC | then delivery. While latency may improve ot would ne | uneconomic and practically useless due to 1. 3. Clouds. | Unfotunately clouds appear and would make persistent | surveillance even if you had the resolution(you don't) | unlikely. | | It's much easier and cheaper and infinitely more effective | to use tags,ad tech on mobile phones and plain on PI for | that type of stalking. | | I hope this clarifies your concerns | crazygringo wrote: | I don't really see how this is such a serious problem. | Again, there isn't a right to privacy from the air. | | And if someone wants to stalk you, it's far more cost- | effective to hire someone to follow you physically. This | doesn't change that. And just to be clear, I'm obviously | not condoning stalking. Just saying this is a pretty bad | tool for it. | | So I don't see anything "nuclear" about this whatsoever. | | (Also to be clear, the _highest_ resolution available is | half-meter. All you can do is basically figure out whether | a car is present somewhere and its approximate color | _maybe_. It 's hard to establish the presence of a human at | all, and you _certainly_ can 't tell who they are or read a | license plate or anything even close to that.) | TigeriusKirk wrote: | I saw this linked somewhere yesterday and bought an existing | image of my neighborhood from late last year. Resolution is 0.75 | meter. I'd describe it as notably worse than what's on Google | Maps (which might be aerial survey), but several years more | recent. | | I have no particular use for it other than curiosity, from that | perspective it was worth $20. | lukefischer wrote: | really depends on the use case and for some reasons Google | Earth is just fine | bookofjoe wrote: | I wonder how long until you can buy the ability to aim a | satellite using your phone and take just the picture -- with the | exact resolution -- that you want. Not if but when.... | adgjlsfhk1 wrote: | the resolution is hard limited by satellite size, and there's | no reason to aim when you can just deploy enough to cover | everything. | lukefischer wrote: | kind of true but it's also orbit positioning VLEO can have | much better image quality than LEO if comparing apples to | apples. There is a cost and that cost is atmospheric friction | and energy use which can degrade the satellite faster | nileshtrivedi wrote: | What I'd like is to have this image then be uploaded in Google | Maps' satelite layer for everyone's benefit. Or OpenStreetMap for | that matter. | amelius wrote: | Copyright will prevent that from happening, I'm guessing. | bornfreddy wrote: | As sibling said, copyright won't let you do that. But there is | lots of imagery already available that can be used more freely | [0], though usually not in high resolution - enough for some | cases, not enough for others. | | [0] https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/ (still check | usage conditions) | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Copyright isn't supposed to apply to non-artistic images. Is | the jurisdiction USA, do you know of caselaw that's relevant | here? Thanks. | alberth wrote: | Question: what service is better than Google Earth for aerial | images for individuals to use? | | Something with a resolution of 1 foot or better. | | I use to use https://zoom.earth/ which was ok, but their high res | image support ends this month. | | Note: I'm willing to pay but don't need a corp contract from | someone like DigitalGlobe. It's just for my on land. | thatwasunusual wrote: | I bought a drone. It does the work fantastically, and I can | send it up every f-ing day. | lukefischer wrote: | Drones are great, hard to scale and provide value to the | masses that don't have drones though | m348e912 wrote: | Has anyone been able to select their highest resolution option to | buy? Looks like its not available for unregistered users at | least. | rsync wrote: | Good news / bad news ... | | The good news is, after overcoming confusion and annoyance about | "launching" their website I was able to quickly and easily | define, select and purchase an image. | | The _bad news_ is that I have dollar-votes that I can cast in the | marketplace and I just _voted for a product that reshapes my | cursor to some cutesy thing for no good reason_. | dougmwne wrote: | Also I have used this company to monitor things like road and | other infrastructure construction. Images most of the planet | daily. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs | lukefischer wrote: | its a great resource. more options the better with varying | resolutions and sensor types | teruakohatu wrote: | > Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly | visible on all shared images. | | Can you crop the images? | | > nor can you sell products you create that contain the images | themselves. | | Can you sell a commercial report containing the images? | | Can the images be published in an journal? | version_five wrote: | Wait, does that mean the image has watermarks on it? I was just | contemplating ordering one of a property we have to make a | poster. Having a watermark rules that out | GasTrader wrote: | Watermark will not be on image. | lukefischer wrote: | Biased being the CEO but just gotta say the comments are great | and will help us better serve you all and the rest of the world | coder543 wrote: | Do you plan to sell off-nadir imagery too? It's one thing I | notice that seems to be missing, and I think that can create | some of the coolest looking satellite photos. | | Although, I wish your license actually allowed me to sell the | photos if I pay for the satellite tasking. It could make for | some cool t-shirts or something! | lukefischer wrote: | Off nadir is something in the roadmap. This was our first | baby step in launching last week. It's trick to sell | imagery...you can sell the derivative works so let me do some | more clarification on the t-shirt idea...i like it and would | buy one! | chadd wrote: | Last year, I was hiking with a crew of Scouts in Philmont, New | Mexico, and at one point used my Garmin inReach to send a text | via Satellite to a friend to tell them where we were and that we | were safe. | | At that point I said to the group - when you come back here with | your families, you won't need to do this - they'll pay $40/month | to watch a real-time live video feed, from space, in 4k, of our | 12 day hike.... This is a step toward that future. | lukefischer wrote: | Another use great use case! Using thermal cameras in the future | would also allow you to see through some of the vegetation. | Search and rescue is a great area to enhance since it's all | about speed. | m3kw9 wrote: | Wouldn't this be regulated like encryption if the resolution is | too fine? | lukefischer wrote: | Every country is different. NOAA regulates this for US based | sensors for the commercial sector. More regulation is coming | eventually just like every other emerging industry | slowhadoken wrote: | "you're purchasing a license to a digital image." Lame. | ledauphin wrote: | i mean - very few photographers sell their copyright. a lot | depends on the terms of the license though. | tubatime wrote: | A reasonable expectation might be that at least for new | imagery this is "work for hire". | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | They already collected the data and are just giving you a | part of their independent work under license. | ledauphin wrote: | does anyone with expertise know how this resolution compares to | Google Maps or other "free" providers? | lucb1e wrote: | Resolution will be worse. | | Age ought to be better unless you got very lucky that a plane | just flew over and the footage was uploaded very fast | afterwards. | | It's a bit like asking how the resolution of your upcoming spy | satellite compares to the people you currently have on the | ground shooting with analog film. It'll be worse, but that's | not the only aspect. | Karliss wrote: | They have resolution samples here https://app.skyfi.com/sample- | preview . | KingLancelot wrote: | [dead] | thinkingemote wrote: | Are the images orthorectified? I imagine they have some kind of | georectification at least, but correction for ground , mountains | etc is kind of important for measurements for distances and area | and for tracing etc | yboris wrote: | For all their talk about "high resolution" there is nothing in | the FAQ (or anywhere else I've found) to what that means. _How | many pixels do you get per square meter on the ground?_ That 's | the only meaningful measure, and it's lacking. | | Am I missing something? | lolc wrote: | I too was wondering about the resolution. Found it in the FAQ: | | > Our current spatial resolutions range from 50cm to 3m for our | optical sensors and 5m for our hyperspectral sensor. SkyFi will | be frequently updating and adding higher resolutions. | | https://www.skyfi.com/faqs | version_five wrote: | You are missing something. Resolution is the feature size on | the ground that can be resolved. So (to simpiify) if it's 0.5m | resolution, and I have some much smaller, but bright reflector | on the ground, you will see it blurred out to look 0.5m wide. | It could be a couple pixels wide, it could be a thousand if you | want to up sample it, the point is you won't see small stuff. | This is why pixels are not mentioned | pmoriarty wrote: | I heard an interesting interview recently with someone who uses | satellite imagery to trade stocks. | | According to him there are data vendors who use such imagery to | do things like (for example) look at how full the parking lots of | certain retail stores are and then use that information to help | them estimate how successful these businesses really are, and | make stock trades based on that. | culi wrote: | Even governments use this technology to calculate how high | stockpiles of certain minerals or resources are based on | shadows and time of day | heipei wrote: | Yes, though at this point I'd say this is old news and table | stakes, so I expect everyone to be using this type of data | already. As an example, Orbital Insights began tracking 250k | parking lots across 96 retail chains at least all the way back | to 2017. Same for things like monitoring gas silo levels via | satellite imagery, etc. If you read it on the blog of one of | the many sat image providers I would assume there to be no more | competitive advantage to be had, unless you can read additional | information from that data that other traders might have | missed. | janalsncm wrote: | Was it Jacob Goldstein's interview with Planet? | | https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/seeing-da... | lukefischer wrote: | It's true and part of our origin story | cornstalks wrote: | > _When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you're | purchasing a license to a digital image._ | | I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those | curious: | | > _What is SkyFi's licensing policy?_ | | > _SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite | industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and | social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or | #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is | clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use | the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis. | You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor | can you sell products you create that contain the images | themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi | EULA (End User License Agreement)._ | | Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven't read the full EULA. | | I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do | with this imagery. | TheJoeMan wrote: | I have to hard disagree on the reasonableness of a licensed | image. Firstly, I'm the one framing the shot. This isn't a | photographer making art, this is me paying a company to point a | camera at xyz coordinates and capture the earth as it is, | unprocessed. So if I personally plan out the perfect beautiful | shot, now SkyFi gets to pitch it to others to make additional | money off it? | | Secondly, calling this "democratized" satellite imagery is a | farce. Democratized to me means here's the pixels you bought, | it's yours to do whatever you want with. | mlindner wrote: | I didn't read their site in detail, but usually you're not | actually framing the shot. You're buying images that they've | already taken. Imaging satellites don't let you task the | angle or direction and they simply continuously take pictures | of anything underneath them as they pass overhead. | jffry wrote: | The linked page prominently talks about pricing for | existing images from a catalog of existing images, OR | paying for an entirely new image | tomjen3 wrote: | Their final point means that you can't use these in a youtube | video, even if you only show them for a few seconds and spend | way more than the cost of these images on your video. | rmorey wrote: | Is that true? I would think a YouTube video would fall under | the first part, sharing on the web/social media. You don't | sell a YouTube video, you distribute it | kyawzazaw wrote: | There are people doing reactions to content so I feel like | an analysis that includes the video from SkyFi should be | okay. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | This is a contract of sale? There's no copyright, surely, as | they're but creative images - they bound by technical | restrictions not artistic ones. AIUI slavish recreations don't | attract copyright. | | Maybe in USA there's a carve-in for satellite images? | | Not sure how space treaties fit with copyright; what's the | jurisdiction, is it where the satellite was launched from? | gghffguhvc wrote: | Just used the iPhone app to purchase an image. Pretty easy | experience. Sign in with Apple, pay with Apple Pay was slick. | Just one defect when toggling to medium resolution and back to | check price difference changed capture area from 25km^2 to some | large area but not back which was not intuitive. My image will be | ready inside two weeks which seems reasonable. | cozzyd wrote: | Is this just a reseller for Maxar imagery? | | FYI if you're working on a federal grant, you technically have | access to Maxar imagery for free for legitimate purposes via the | NextView license, though in practice getting access is a bit | harder (if you work in polar programs, the Polar Geospatial | Center will help...). | lukefischer wrote: | no, not just a reseller. resellers are just a sales channel and | don't negotiate on process or price on behalf of the customer. | we do | yellow_lead wrote: | Is there any restriction around military bases or can I buy one | pointed at Area 51, or Russian military bases, or certain | conflict areas in Ukraine? | lukefischer wrote: | First image I got was of Area 51 and Russian troop build ups | last Feb | lelag wrote: | If not, I was thinking this type of services could be a boon to | moderately-funded OSINT organisations as it would make you able | to get fresh satellite imagery very easy and accessible. | mNovak wrote: | There's been heavy use of these kinds of services for exactly | this purpose. See [1] for example. Typically airbases, mass | graves, bridges; things we know won't move or change too | fast. | | [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation- | repo... | kepler1 wrote: | Except imagery of Israel, right? For some reason we give them a | special pass to not be subject to the same scrutiny and concerns | as other places, huh? | lukefischer wrote: | We got the feedback on the cursor. Changing it back as I type, | lol. Message received :) | jebarker wrote: | I dislike that this website replaces my cursor with a circle. Is | there any good reason to do that? | stefan_ wrote: | I like how it goes from full black to full white background. | Anything to blast my eyes. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely | (Chrome on MacOS). It's like they built it only for | touchscreens? | | I expect I'll never go back and use it now. Jeez, who signed | off on this? | culi wrote: | Do you have javascript disabled? Some design heavy sites like | to replace the default cursor. The CSS standard[0] still only | really supports the few custom cursors that we've had for | decades now and provides no way to style them so the only way | to achieve this is through javascript currently | | [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor | cmrdporcupine wrote: | No, but it might uBlock origin blocking something, I dunno. | | I went into devtools and modified the CSS attribute and was | able to get past it. | | Dumb. | lukefischer wrote: | Thanks for the feedback. We may go back. I signed off on it | entropie wrote: | > It actually is making my mouse cursor disappear entirely | | Same. Brave on Windows | lukefischer wrote: | just submitted the design change to go back to the regular | cursor...thought we were being cool, guess not lol | lukefischer wrote: | It's all opinions but good feedback. The cursor was a design | choice. We may go back | alberth wrote: | Luke, any chance you could resell Maxar 15cm imagery? (Or if | something is better, that) | | Dealing with their sales process is horrible. I'd love to buy | it from you given how easy you make it. | | https://blog.maxar.com/earth- | intelligence/2020/introducing-1... | lukefischer wrote: | That's the goal...we have some interesting partnerships and | a partner of ours is Albedo- 10cm resolution. A lot of our | work deals with negotations to get them to believe the | mission. Most have incentive to keep selling to the Govt, | which I totally understand. | alberth wrote: | Two follow up questions. | | 1. Isn't Albedo fake "10cm". Meaning aren't they using | 50cm imagery and apply computations to it to "simulate" | 10cm. | | The image on this blog post, when zoomed in is actually | quite bad | | https://albedo.com/post/albedo-simulated-imagery | | 2. Can you explain why you mean when you say "most have | incentivizes to keep selling to govt". | | Are you implying they can't work with you? | virgulino wrote: | Firefox 109.0 on Windows 10 shows no cursor at all. It is not | possible to use the site. | cjensen wrote: | Be aware that MacOS/Safari still has occasional bugs where | the cursor shape gets stuck on whatever the web page switched | it to. I know how to deal with that, but it's an annoyance | when it happens. | agolio wrote: | I like it FWIW :) maybe removing it on information pages like | for pricing and keeping it on the landing page with the | interactive glove is a good compromise | Finnucane wrote: | Ok my iPad it makes a dot where I touch the screen. It does | seem like an irrelevant distraction. | | Also, it would be nice to be able to search for available | images without the app. | [deleted] | mrahmadawais wrote: | Oh what has the world come to. This is amazing. | daemonhunter wrote: | Custom mouse cursor, how 90s. | lukefischer wrote: | It was a design choice we made obviously. Probably gonna go | back | gwking wrote: | On macOS Safari, it causes the mouse to disappear when you | transition from the browser window to another screen. I can't | help but wonder how much money they spent creating that | nuisance. | mistrial9 wrote: | in fact, there was a 90s website that sold high resolution | satellite imagery prints, called Pictopia | JumpCrisscross wrote: | I'm generally sceptical of latent EO, but I've never seen such a | slick B2C play. | | Few thoughts: | | (1) Depending on your acquisition contracts, you may have | scattered access to historic imaging. For a consumer, having an | image of my house around _e.g._ the time of a break-in is | valuable. (As a party trick, recent imagery will work in a way | "wait a day" doesn't.) | | (2) You've heard this, but it bears repeating: four hours is an | order of magnitude more valuable than 24 and an order less than | one. You should be able to predict fast-return windows, given | orbits and ground station coordinates, for a given AOI. Bonus: | natural time pressure on the sale. | | (3) Multispectral options unclear. May be worth discriminating by | band. | | (4) Exclusivity pricing. Where you sell the image to me, fully, | and without retaining the right to re-sell it to anyone else. | | There also appears to be a name collision with an Israeli ISP? | lukefischer wrote: | Excellent thoughts! Once more supply comes then there is | obviously more consumer optionality (time of a break in). We | test internally on ordering a New Image via tasking a satellite | (aka pass prediction) but I'm not willing to release it to the | wild until its reliable and a magical experience. We aren't | there yet. | | Speed of delivery is extremely important. Again, more supply | means better speed and future tech will enable downloads | faster. | | Copy all on multispectral and will put that into the pipe to | clear up re: bands | | Exclusivity pricing is interesting and what we talk about a | lot. It's a tougher problem because you may buy that image from | us from a specific provider but then another provider could | take the same exact image and it's not unique anymore. | Regardless, will work on it and if there is enough demand then | I'm all about it. | justicz wrote: | I'm really excited for this. I thought this was what the company | Planet (planet.com) was going to be, but when I actually tried to | buy images from them it went through a complicated sales process | I couldn't easily complete. I felt like I clearly wasn't the | target customer. I love websites with an "add to cart" button | instead of a "contact sales" button :) | justicz wrote: | It would be really cool if I could upload a short python | snippet/map-reduce job to run a piece of code over the entire | globe. Could be super useful for e.g. counting all of the solar | farms in the world. | lukefischer wrote: | I despise "contact sales" and why I essentially outlawed it at | the company. | CPLX wrote: | I saw this on Twitter last night and bought two pictures. They | were from the existing images feature at the highest resolution. | | The images totally sucked. They were blurry, and the experience | was completely confusing since the sort of preview type map | making image where you move the square around was very clear and | sharp, and then the one I ordered was totally unusable for | anything. | lukefischer wrote: | What were you trying to use it for? Happy to give a full refund | if you didn't get what you wanted. Email or chat with our | customer support and give them the details. | rsync wrote: | I need this, as in, today. | | I am ready to make an immediate purchase. I want to give them my | money. | | But all I see is "launch skyfi" ... and, of course, I don't want | to "launch" anything. I want to enter simple information into a | web form and hit a submit button. | | I do not need an app install or a telephone. All I need is a web | browser. | | Is it actually impossible to purchase one of these images from | their actual website ? | carbocation wrote: | I felt the same way but clicked "Launch skyfi" anyways. It | takes you to a login form in the browser. Bad name for a link. | version_five wrote: | I clicked the button, on my phone, and got page that said | it's best viewed in the app, and a link to the app store, | with no other option SkyFi is an easy-to-use | mobile or desktop app that allows you to get satellite | imagery of any place in the world at any given time. SkyFi is | creating a marketplace for businesses and consumers alike to | capture earth observation data to make better informed | business decisions, capture life's most precious memories, | and more. The SkyFi App, thanks to its satellite partners, | allows customers to either order a New Image, where a | satellite in-orbit is ordered to capture an Area of Interest | for a date in the future, or select an Existing Image from | our database of hundreds of previously-captured images. The | best part? This can all be done from your phone, tablet, or | computer. | | This is completely unwanted, I agree with the person at the | top of the thread. | cridenour wrote: | That button just opens a web app in your browser though. Did | you not try it? | rsync wrote: | No, I didn't. | | I also didn't try the "culture" link in their page footer ... | since I had the same interest in their culture as I had in | "launching" anything. | | OK, onward ... | tubatime wrote: | Are you this insufferable in real life too? Do you harass | the wait-staff when the menu says "surcharge" but you think | it should say "fee"? What other ways should the entire | world cater to your trivial preferences? | ademup wrote: | Down voted because the entirely of this message is | directed at the poster and nowhere near the topic. | layer8 wrote: | On mobile it redirects you to the app-store apps. | josephpmay wrote: | You can do exactly that from this link: | https://app.skyfi.com/welcome | elitepleb wrote: | Had to switch browsers on desktop for it not to show: "SkyFi | on mobile is best viewed on our app." | lukefischer wrote: | We have to have an interface that pulls in options. But good | feedback and would like to know specifics of how you'd intend | to purchase | einpoklum wrote: | Issues: | | 1. "resolution (available in medium, high, or very high)" <- so, | they're not willing to tell me what the resolution is? Is it a | secret? | | 2. I don't like it that there's an app for doing stuff. I don't | want their app. I just want to (maybe) buy an image. | | 3. Why is there a 25 Km^2 minimum? That's huge. Can they really | not capture smaller areas? I may want to get a satellite image of | my home town or village (not city). | conor_f wrote: | I honestly expected the resolution to be better? The sample | preview (https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview) really isn't that | great? Where it the idea this is 50cm resolution from? | qwertox wrote: | That's about what you get with a satellite. What maps like | Google contain is aerial imagery. | | Here's [0] an interesting What If (XKCD) which deals with the | resolution of the Hubble Space telescope if it were pointed at | the earth. | | [0] https://what-if.xkcd.com/32/ | askvictor wrote: | I'm curious for a re-write of this for JWST | IceWreck wrote: | https://app.skyfi.com/explore is much better than the sample | preview at https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview which is weird | cause they claim that the sample preview is fully processed and | better. | | But it looks like explore is based on google earth. So the free | preview is better than the paid thing ? | coder543 wrote: | A lot of Google Maps "satellite" imagery is actually aerial | imagery, not satellite. Getting that kind of detail and | resolution with satellite photos is extremely hard / | expensive. | | If you want up to date imagery, you could certainly choose to | task an airplane yourself, but that is going to cost a lot | more than what SkyFi is charging for one-off satellite | images. | | So, no, the free "preview" is not better than the paid thing, | and the reason they're using Google Maps is clearly to help | you precisely mark the area that you want them to capture. | invalidator wrote: | Did you zoom in? When I zoom in on one of the major | intersections and look at the cars, it looks about right. Half- | meter resolution means that each car should be several blurry | pixels wide, and that's what I get. | alberth wrote: | When I zoom into my property, a Google logo is display. So I | assume they are sourcing from them. | [deleted] | qwertox wrote: | The explorer is actually Google Maps. It looks like they | are using it for you to have a tool to select the area that | interests you. | | Maybe there should be a disclaimer. | 7ewis wrote: | I zoomed in, was also disappointed. Don't know the use case | for these photos, but when you compare it to the quality of | say a drone photo, SkyFi is nowhere near as good. | | I'm sure there must be a market for these photos, but for | most people I think a drone is probably better and more cost | effective. | lukefischer wrote: | we have drone partnerships, airplane, stratospheric | balloons, etc and are just STARTING with satellites. Drone | imagery is better but a problem of scale but we are trying | to solve that. Think of it not as photos but more so of | data....we could never list the complete use cases here | because there are so many | alberth wrote: | > but when you compare it to the quality of say a drone | photo | | Comparing a satellite/plane photo to a drone is apples to | oranges. | | There's no way to scale a business in providing global | drone level coverage. | | Now there are services that fly planes with high res | imagery that can get down to ~20cm. And even these business | are super difficult to scale. | [deleted] | walnutclosefarm wrote: | It looks about right You can plainly see the 5 yd line markers | on House Field (in Austin, TX) on the image. Those lines are at | most 15cm wide - enough to seriously desaturate the green in | any pixel that contains a line, but nowhere near enough to show | as a sharp line. | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | The 50cm resolution is much better than what I expected (you | can clearly see lines that are much less than 50 cm wide), but | the 75 cm resolution is much, much worse than the 50cm one. Is | it possible that some of the "50 cm" imagery is actually much | better than 50 cm (which would defeat the purpose of a sample)? | ghastmaster wrote: | Keep in mind that if you are looking for "Hi-Resolution" images | of Israel, the results may be limited by the Kyl Bingaman | Amendment. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment | thaufeki wrote: | Wow its not even an international agreement, it's just straight | up an American law for Israel's benefit in particular | cstejerean wrote: | > After a further review in 2019, the NOAA reversed itself and | dropped the GSD limit to 0.4m in a decision published in the | Federal Register on 21 July 2020. | | So I think "high resolution" is fine as it is >= 50cm | londons_explore wrote: | The fact they charge differently for existing vs new images tells | me that they will probably let you know which applies before | purchase... | | And if that's the case, I think there could be a market for a | monitoring/alerting system to detect if anyone else orders | imagery of your factory/port. | campchase wrote: | Absolutely brutal for the SkyFi team trying to have a relaxing | Saturday afternoon - keep up the good work, you nuts. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-21 23:00 UTC)