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What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like

oddly-even.com

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Re: What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like

#42

Post by shubb »

dakrisht wrote: post #38

Pretty cool. Now imagine the tools the NSA has, live satellite feeds and hi-res cameras all over the US and the world with a bunch of Diet Coke drinking zombies clicking, zooming and panning all day long.

Working with satellite data I can tell you that the maximum resolution data you are likely to get from a satellite is 0.25m resolution (i.e. a pixel is the size of a car wheel).

And that's talking about likely military satellites - the public are lucky to get hold of 0.5m resolution.

Also, clouds get in the way. A lot.

For super high resolution imaginary like you are talking about, you need something like the ARGOS system [1].

This image was made by a slowly automatically rotating camera, but the ARGOS system seems to use a whole bunch of high resolution cameras, like a insects eye.

The interesting thing about the ARGOS demo on NPR was the automatic object tracking. The system can track cars, and people, as they move around. You could go back through the data to follow a guy back to his house after he is identified as planting a bomb. Or more HN, posting something from an internet cafe.

I really think that, as technology makes pervasive surveillance possible, we need laws to explicitly limit what the state or companies can do, at least domestically.

It supprises me that people are so much more upset about the NSA gathering data, given that they willingly gave it to ad networks that want to use it to make bad decisions. The highest cost google ads are for loans, insurance, and other services where the provider makes more money if the user makes an inappropriate choice. Imagine if google put a googleX ARGOS on it's Loon baloons, and found some way to monetize it. We really need laws in place to stop anyone doing that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA <- skip to about 1:30

Re: What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like

#43

Post by boyter »

deletes wrote: post #4

A similar thing done with London. http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html Also funny: http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/?v=60.1,... Playing a table-top game: http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/?v=66.3,... Baseball: http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/?v=89.1,...

Heh, I was going to post the Thomas the tank engine shot.

http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/?v=60.3,...

There is another train on the track.

http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/?v=-127....

Here is a Ferrari (California I think) for anyone interested. The amount of details you can pick up is pretty amazing.

Re: What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like

#47

Post by skrebbel »

anonymouz wrote: post #25
taspeotis wrote: post #16

Honestly I thought I was going to see some visualisation of a 1px high image vs. various other long things. E.g. " At a pixel density of 330ppi this image would be longer than 1000 Starship Enterprises* ". Alas, no. > What a 600,000 megapixels wide picture looks like (oddly-even.com) 23 points by lukedeering 1 hour ago | flag | 12 comments Megapixel: I do not think it means what you think it means. > A megapixel (MP…

We have 600 * 10^9 pixels, at 330ppi resolution this would correspond to 1.828 * 10^9 inches, or 4.618 * 10^7m, i.e., about 46200km. Now, there are different Starship Enterprises of somewhat varying lengths, but let's take NCC 1701-D, because that's the first one I found data on. Wikipedia puts its length at 642.5m [1]. Thus, it ould be about 71880 Starship enterprises for the given length (not accounting for any oth…

I'm really interested as to why you two consider a fictional space ship a good "underbelly feeling" measure of size. I like Star Trek, but I have absolutely no feeling for the size of the Enterprise. I'd believe it if you said it was 3km long, but also if you said that it was 400m long.

Not meant as a harsh criticism though, I like the math and the geekiness :)

Re: What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like

#50

Post by tomjen3 »

shubb wrote: post #42
dakrisht wrote: post #38

Pretty cool. Now imagine the tools the NSA has, live satellite feeds and hi-res cameras all over the US and the world with a bunch of Diet Coke drinking zombies clicking, zooming and panning all day long.

Working with satellite data I can tell you that the maximum resolution data you are likely to get from a satellite is 0.25m resolution (i.e. a pixel is the size of a car wheel). And that's talking about likely military satellites - the public are lucky to get hold of 0.5m resolution. Also, clouds get in the way. A lot. For super high resolution imaginary like you are talking about, you need something like the ARGOS s…

I assume that the government has better than normal classified satelite tech, so how do you know what kinds of resolutions are possible?
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