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Looking at Google Earth the other day and seeing how some of the maps there and on other sites were outdated the thought occurred that maybe here was a way for some airline to make a little extra money and maybe stay in business (or lower the price of its tickets for us). The idea would be to mount
cameras simliar to those used on satellites now under each plane so they could take and transmit pictures to some company like Google during its flight, giving that company an up-to-date view of the world for its users. The company, whether it was Google, Microsoft, or some other entity, would pay the airline for the photos. The airlines would benefit from the extra cash flow and the company would benefit from the edge it now had over its competition in this field. There might also be a subscriber market for real-time video showing the night sky via cameras attached on top of the planes. The streaming view would be much better than you can get with all of the light pollution around most cities.
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That would be great - but they'd need a couple of tweaks. Real-time would be a security concern, although if the images are just stitched into the existing mosaic database - that would be okay. You wouldn't want people to be able to tap into the live stream. |
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The main issue I'd see is that there are pretty well defined flight routes for airlines, so you'd end up with well photographed strips around the world, but missing most of the planet. |
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But some up to date data is better than none. I'd enjoy being able to check the parking lot densities before going to restaurant/mall/store etc. |
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You'd need to add an algorithm to suppress submission of the data-feed into the central database in cloudy conditions. |
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The central DB would have to have separations for "clear", "clear night", and "right now". If the "right now" was clear enough, it could go into the "clear" category. |
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Very nice idea. I'm not quite sure what kind of view you would get from the underside of a plane at night, but I would love to see a daytime flight over land. |
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