I have searched for the answer to this question for a while. The level of detail on google maps is pretty remarkable, when you consider the sheer size of the planet. Complicated features, such as irregular shapes of land masses and bodies of water, are rendered in quite a high level of detail (down to a couple meters). Not to mention the countless roads...just look at all the hundreds of thousands tiny glacial lakes up in Canada. When you flick between the satellite view and the map view, they're all drawn quite correctly.
So, considering that these maps are vector illustrations, exactly how were they drawn? Did a team of humans divide up the map, and just work away on outlining satellite imagery by hand? Or did google develop some sort of automatic tracing software? Did they base the imagery off the satellite photos, or pre-existing maps that were scanned in somehow? Unless the process was automated, I couldn't imagine the process of drawing google maps taking any less than thousands upon thousands of man-hours. |
