The following link is an interesting site to zoom in on and verify some local areas:http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120298,00.asp

Before anyone moves the thread as being non MSFS related, I want MSFS scenery developers to think about the potential this offers for scenery development.It takes patience, but now it is possible to stitch together a large, detailed sat. pic for major urban areas which can be processed by resample and turned into photoreal scenery. This process has always been available (I used it for a small test project I did for Phoenix), but navigating around Google's interface makes it much easier, or as easy as such a project could be.-JohnEdit: Nix this idea--Google places a faint watermark in the sat. images

Still a great idea John,How about using the USGS Urban areas available out of WorldWind 1.3? They don't cover the entire US, just major urban areas but are full color and 1 meter resolution. If you haven't seen NASA's free Worldwind 1.3 it's quite amazing.Zane

>>urban areas but are full color and 1 meter resolution. even better - they are 30 cm resolution.I totally agree about the World Wind 1.3 - probably the most exciting software I have on my PC.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

If you have a link, I'd love to take a look at it Zane.-John

Hi John,Here it is: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/It's a 170 meg download and will take up about a gig on your hard drive but you probably won't be able to leave it alone for a good week or two, or three... or...I've looked at the Nazca lines, Iwo Jima, Mt. Fuji, all the Disneylands *:-* , every airport I've ever actually flown out of, many airports I want to fly in to, all the houses I've lived in... the list just drones on and on. You can't get up and leave... help!:-zhelp , it's another plot to drain our brains out thru the computer :-8 .Have fun,Zane

By the way, you can download the USGS Urban Area color aerials directly from http://seamless.usgs.gov/Unfortunately, the user interface is a little clumsy and the files are huge, but if you have some time you can get great quality aerials and from what I can tell they are royalty free. I got bored one weekend and downloaded the entire set for San Francisco bay area at about 2.5 m/p resolution. It's almost 6 gigs AFTER converting them to JPG from TIFF. I think it was 50 or 60 gigs originally :)Matt

Hi Matt,Thanks for that link. What I have considered doing... along with all my other projects :-roll , is to take these urban satellite shots and insert them as the ground scenery for a 3-5 mile circle around the airports I most frequent. There is a beautiful scenery done of Randolph AFB and surrounding area that gave me this idea. Now I know where to find the right shots. The time... if only I had a minion to work on all these ideas floating about in my head }( .Cheers,Zane