There used to be a feature on Mapquest.com (I think that was the site), where you could see a photo of the neighborhood you were looking at. It seems to be gone. Is there another service that does this?
My other question is, how did they do that? Whose satellites were taking those photos? It was very amazing. You could see cars in parking lots and benches even on the most detailed zoom.
Was this stopped for some reason?
I use terraserver
Well that sucks.
They gots some stuff over there. But I cannot really zoom in as much as MapQuest could. Maybe if I paid for it.
The USGS provides aerial photos of some cities for free with stunning resolution that terraserver would charge you for. I wrote about them here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=234819
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. The city has an online map system, which is linked to the county assesor’s office, which has detailed maps augmented with satellite photos and popup windows about property owners and values.
Click here. If you use a popup blocker, disable it for this site. This may take a little time to first load the java classes and stuff, the first time you go here.
As an exercise, click “Address” in the left column, then enter “2000” in the number field on the bottom, then “Bannie” in the Street Name field.
That’s the mayor’s house. Note that the popup along the right shows you the parcel number, and how much the house was last bought for, as well as a link to the assessor site, tax bill details, and the representative elected officials for the location; all public information.
Now pick “Identify” in the left column, and then click on some other houses on the screen. The popup will tell you who owns the seleted house, and how much they paid for it. Use “Pan” and drag the main display window to move around, or “Zoom out” first. It’s fun!
The GIS I use at work has incredible air photos online, and even better color oblique photos available for employees; resolution on the order of centimeters, not meters.