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Planet Explorer Beta

planet.com

1–10 of 59 posts

Re: Planet Explorer Beta

#5
post #2

Someone want to explain? It does not look free what is it useful for? Looks like Google Maps with a timeslider.

If I'm not mistaken, the benefit of Planet over Google Maps is that all imagery on Planet is less than 24 hours old. So, you can see daily snapshots of different locations.

The time slider is huge (albeit potentially creepy)... you can see before and afters of a disaster, check if someone's car was parked outside on a certain day, watch progress of construction, etc.

Re: Planet Explorer Beta

#7
post #2

Someone want to explain? It does not look free what is it useful for? Looks like Google Maps with a timeslider.

If I'm not mistaken, the benefit of Planet over Google Maps is that all imagery on Planet is less than 24 hours old. So, you can see daily snapshots of different locations. The time slider is huge (albeit potentially creepy)... you can see before and afters of a disaster, check if someone's car was parked outside on a certain day, watch progress of construction, etc.

Sound like some version of Eye In The Sky[0], scary and unsettling.

[0]: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

Re: Planet Explorer Beta

#9
post #4

Map projection feels weird. Anyone knows which one are they using?

Looks like Web Mercator. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Mercator)

It's the same projection most online maps use, which is a bummer. Equirectangular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection) is much easier to grok (IMHO) and is supported out of the box by D3.

Re: Planet Explorer Beta

#10
post #9
post #4

Map projection feels weird. Anyone knows which one are they using?

Looks like Web Mercator. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Mercator ) It's the same projection most online maps use, which is a bummer. Equirectangular ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection ) is much easier to grok (IMHO) and is supported out of the box by D3.

Equirectangular is not a projection. For all of web mercator's faults, it at least preserves direction, which is nice when you're looking at streets/etc locally. Regardless, all of the web mapping stuff standardized on web mercator ages ago. Like it or not, for web mapping, you're stuck with web mercator, unless you want to serve your own streets/etc.
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