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Satellite images

L

Leemazz

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unitedkingdom
Hello all , im sure this has been asked a thousand times but ive never found an answer .

I have downloaded some free satellite images from virtualearth.net or Bingmaps and was wondering if you can use them in payware scenery .

If i have to purchase the satellite images of Rwanda where do i get them from , thanks for reading .

Lee Marrow
 
While the images are able to be accessed and viewed at no cost, they are not "free" as such.

By this, I mean they remain the property of the orginal image vendor (DigitalGlobe, etc) and are licensed for Google or Bing to use.

Unfortunately this means that you can not use them for any scenery that you are planning to distribute (payware or freeware) without obtaining consent (usually in the form of a paid license) from the image vendor.
 
I thought so . Any ideas where i could purchase the imagery from , i looked at one but the area was too big and cost $559 , thats just not economical for me to purchase i would end up making massive losses ... Any ideas ?

Or is there another way of doing it
 
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Unfortunately, this is the dilemma for payware projects.

The imagery is a major outlay.

Sorry, I don't know of any open source imagery for Rwanda. Perhaps someone else may.
 
The OSM project was given specific permission to use Bing! aerial imagery for tracing vectors. This should open the door for everyone, concerning the tracing of images for vectors.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing

The last time I checkd, Google does not allow tracing... but they do allow drawing on Google Earth, and the resulting KML export is your property to do with as you wish... so their prohibition of tracing is bogus. Yes you can.

Dick
 
Its really strict regarding satellite images it makes me wonder how devs go about purchasing rights to use the images as its very expensive , surely it cannot be worth it to purchase satellite images and make a profit from releasing a payware scenery .

If i was to purchase imagery of Kigali , Rwanda it would cost $559 im sorry but that is a crazy price for low quality and out of date imagery plus you cant garrantee a profit .

I guess making sceneries in the U.S were you can get the images for free would be a better option .

Lee Marrow
 
Hi Lee,

I am not sure what resolution and size you are talking about, but 600 dollar is quite cheap for imagery. I have seen prices that are much higher than that.

For sure this is a dilemma for scenery designers, since it is hard to recover these costs. Maybe sometimes you can get imagery cheaper by contacting the local authorities. But I am not sure if that would work so well for a scenery in Africa.
 
Yeah it is crazy . If $600 is cheap i will give it a miss im just not willing to take a gamble on an African scenery which probably wont sell that well .
 
I know it is a lot of money. But for example here in the Netherlands to buy an image at 1 meter resolution can cost you around 400 dollar for an image that cover 8x8 kilometres. So covering a reasonable part of the country easily costs you thousands of dollars.

Of course making aerial imagery is not cheap either. They have to fly a plane, do a lot of post-processing to get the final imagery, etc. It are often commercial companies that do this work. Especially for areas where there are less customers it will be hard for them to recover those costs as well.

Of course I do understand that for scenery developers this is difficult, because everybody would like to use imagery. Especially for a payware developer this will be a hard decision to take, since it takes a big investment. I am not a payware developer myself, but maybe it is possible to negotiate with the imagery company? Maybe instead of the fixed price they would be happy with a certain percentage of each sale? From my experience the game industry is not their normal market. Usually they target government mainly. So any extra sale they get from the gaming industry might be interesting for them as well.
 
Yes, the USGS images can be used. It is very nice of the US government to provide them for free. It would be nice if more governments did that with geo data they have bought or generated using tax payers money.
 
It's dificult to discuss the issue, but will be great can get imagery of some region of the world, anyway in Spain is totally available and the quality is not bad, why can't other countries do the same. I guess all is about who is the owner of the ortophotos. the same about the mesh. :cool:
Edit: well I remember too that this imagery can't be redistribuited with commercial pourpouse.:o
 
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