What's interesting to me is that the pricing isn't that unique. That's pretty normal for a list price. $7 sq km + 25 sq km min (basically the size of the image).<p>That's probably because they're (I think?) buying tasking capacity from other companies, so the pricing can't be below the rate they negotiate. That probably results in then negotiating a below list price from a few companies and then setting prices that wind up being close to the average list price for the industry.<p>The difference is two very key things:
1) no minimum overall buy
2) fully public pricing<p>That price is pretty normal, but usually you have to commit to at least a few thousand dollars worth. 25 sq km min per target is also pretty normal, but the contracts usually require you committing to at least a few hundred of those.<p>Next is public list pricing. Every company has list pricing, and that's basically what smaller customers will pay. Large customers negotiate it down, of course. But just explicitly advertising the list pricing is also a big deal and not normally done. It's usually way too hidden.<p>A lot of folks (hi there Joe) have been pushing for more transparency in pricing, and a lot of companies have been talking about chasing the "long tail" of small customers for a long time, but it's really good to see someone actually doing it.
I just bought and received imagery of my rural property, just for fun.<p>The resolution is very poor. Technically you might be able to make out 50cm things as a pixel, but it’s blurry and has a lot of artefacts. The colours are also not brilliant. If you’re expecting anything at all like what you get from google earth, you’ll be disappointed.<p>However, it was a very recent image (a few weeks ago), and with clear and sensible pricing. I can see how for some uses it would be perfect.<p>I had someone come and map 170ac for about AU$1k using a drone. Extreme resolution (and 3D + DSM too), so there are a lot of options.
> <i>When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you’re purchasing a license to a digital image.</i><p>I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those curious:<p>> <i>What is SkyFi’s licensing policy?</i><p>> <i>SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis. You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi EULA (End User License Agreement).</i><p>Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven’t read the full EULA.<p>I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do with this imagery.
Keep in mind that if you are looking for "Hi-Resolution" images of Israel, the results may be limited by the Kyl Bingaman Amendment.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment</a>
I honestly expected the resolution to be better? The sample preview (<a href="https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview" rel="nofollow">https://app.skyfi.com/sample-preview</a>) really isn't that great? Where it the idea this is 50cm resolution from?
Last year, I was hiking with a crew of Scouts in Philmont, New Mexico, and at one point used my Garmin inReach to send a text via Satellite to a friend to tell them where we were and that we were safe.<p>At that point I said to the group - when you come back here with your families, you won't need to do this - they'll pay $40/month to watch a real-time live video feed, from space, in 4k, of our 12 day hike.... This is a step toward that future.
I’m generally sceptical of latent EO, but I’ve never seen such a slick B2C play.<p>Few thoughts:<p>(1) Depending on your acquisition contracts, you may have scattered access to historic imaging. For a consumer, having an image of my house around <i>e.g.</i> the time of a break-in is valuable. (As a party trick, recent imagery will work in a way “wait a day” doesn’t.)<p>(2) You’ve heard this, but it bears repeating: four hours is an order of magnitude more valuable than 24 and an order less than one. You should be able to predict fast-return windows, given orbits and ground station coordinates, for a given AOI. Bonus: natural time pressure on the sale.<p>(3) Multispectral options unclear. May be worth discriminating by band.<p>(4) Exclusivity pricing. Where you sell the image to me, fully, and without retaining the right to re-sell it to anyone else.<p>There also appears to be a name collision with an Israeli ISP?
The statements in this thread by the company founders are concerning. How long until you can pay them to drive or walk or drone fly past someone's house with a 360° camera, Google Maps style? Not long, it seems. And if not them, then others.<p>The implications of this are worrying. Public spaces are public, but the social contract has never included being unexpectedly and repeatedly monitored. This is taking the privacy mores of the Internet and applying them to the physical world.<p>If we're not cautious to nip this in the bud right now, we'll end up with a pervasive surveillance scenario similar to that in Stephen Baxter's <i>The Light Of Other Days</i>.<p>What is the equivalent of Let's Encrypt and HTTPS Everywhere for the real world? As we're going to need it before much longer.
What I'd like is to have this image then be uploaded in Google Maps' satelite layer for everyone's benefit. Or OpenStreetMap for that matter.
I heard an interesting interview recently with someone who uses satellite imagery to trade stocks.<p>According to him there are data vendors who use such imagery to do things like (for example) look at how full the parking lots of certain retail stores are and then use that information to help them estimate how successful these businesses really are, and make stock trades based on that.
Is this just a reseller for Maxar imagery?<p>FYI if you're working on a federal grant, you technically have access to Maxar imagery for free for legitimate purposes via the NextView license, though in practice getting access is a bit harder (if you work in polar programs, the Polar Geospatial Center will help...).
I remember starting my career in GIS in 9th grade. We had a bunch of Landsat 5 (I think?) imagery and it was just the wildest, coolest thing ever. Especially when we began using the infrared bands to make vegetation pop out in false-colour composites.<p>Back then 30m resolution was pretty high. :)<p>Then Google Maps became a thing and it all slowly expanded into the public space. The rest is history.
Good news / bad news ...<p>The good news is, after overcoming confusion and annoyance about "launching" their website I was able to quickly and easily define, select and purchase an image.<p>The <i>bad news</i> is that I have dollar-votes that I can cast in the marketplace and I just <i>voted for a product that reshapes my cursor to some cutesy thing for no good reason</i>.
Does this allow me to use purchased images as a reference for OpenStreetMap contributions? Or even better, donate them to OpenStreetMap for other contributors to reference?<p>Occasionally the available imagery around important features is too outdated (e.g. completed construction of public infrastructure) and I’d love to be able to fund a prioritized update.
Also I have used this company to monitor things like road and other infrastructure construction. Images most of the planet daily.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Labs</a>
I need this, as in, today.<p>I am ready to make an immediate purchase. I want to give them my money.<p>But all I see is "launch skyfi" ... and, of course, I don't want to "launch" anything. I want to enter simple information into a web form and hit a submit button.<p>I do not need an app install or a telephone. All I need is a web browser.<p>Is it actually impossible to purchase one of these images from their actual website ?
Are the images orthorectified? I imagine they have some kind of georectification at least, but correction for ground , mountains etc is kind of important for measurements for distances and area and for tracing etc
I saw this on Twitter last night and bought two pictures. They were from the existing images feature at the highest resolution.<p>The images totally sucked. They were blurry, and the experience was completely confusing since the sort of preview type map making image where you move the square around was very clear and sharp, and then the one I ordered was totally unusable for anything.
I saw this linked somewhere yesterday and bought an existing image of my neighborhood from late last year. Resolution is 0.75 meter. I'd describe it as notably worse than what's on Google Maps (which might be aerial survey), but several years more recent.<p>I have no particular use for it other than curiosity, from that perspective it was worth $20.
For all their talk about "high resolution" there is nothing in the FAQ (or anywhere else I've found) to what that means. <i>How many pixels do you get per square meter on the ground?</i> That's the only meaningful measure, and it's lacking.<p>Am I missing something?
Very cool. Always interested in these hi-res photos for agricultural field monitoring. A little pricey though.<p>ETA: 5 sq km seems big for a minimum. Multispectral availability is super cool tho!
I wonder how long until you can buy the ability to aim a satellite using your phone and take just the picture — with the exact resolution — that you want. Not if but when....
Is there a technical limitation that allows a maximum resolution of 50cm? Or could you potentially go to 25 or 10 just by dialing up the zoom level on the satalites?
How does it compare to <a href="https://spymesat.com/" rel="nofollow">https://spymesat.com/</a> which has been around since 9+ years?
I've long wondered why we couldn't start collecting pure drone footage for this kind of data. Literally decentralize the collection of overhead imagery.
*SkyFi Employee here! Would love feedback!*<p>Someone requested a price filter so that a SkyFi user could say "I want a picture of Austin, Texas under $30" and all related Existing Images would appear.<p>Thoughts on this feature?<p>Down the road, we could implement alerts/push notifications of "Images under $XX for X AOI", which I think would really gain traction across infrastructure, agriculture, etc. use cases.
Issues:<p>1. "resolution (available in medium, high, or very high)" <- so, they're not willing to tell me what the resolution is? Is it a secret?<p>2. I don't like it that there's an app for doing stuff. I don't want their app. I just want to (maybe) buy an image.<p>3. Why is there a 25 Km^2 minimum? That's huge. Can they really not capture smaller areas? I may want to get a satellite image of my home town or village (not city).
Question: what service is better than Google Earth for aerial images for individuals to use?<p>Something with a resolution of 1 foot or better.<p>I use to use <a href="https://zoom.earth/" rel="nofollow">https://zoom.earth/</a> which was ok, but their high res image support ends this month.<p>Note: I’m willing to pay but don’t need a corp contract from someone like DigitalGlobe. It’s just for my on land.
Just used the iPhone app to purchase an image. Pretty easy experience. Sign in with Apple, pay with Apple Pay was slick. Just one defect when toggling to medium resolution and back to check price difference changed capture area from 25km^2 to some large area but not back which was not intuitive. My image will be ready inside two weeks which seems reasonable.
I’m really excited for this. I thought this was what the company Planet (planet.com) was going to be, but when I actually tried to buy images from them it went through a complicated sales process I couldn’t easily complete. I felt like I clearly wasn’t the target customer. I love websites with an “add to cart” button instead of a “contact sales” button :)
Luke is a former colleague of mine, and I got pretty excited when I saw his new company. I got a chance to try out their beta, and it was a pretty smooth experience! I was most surprised by how affordable it was to buy a small portion of an existing photo. They made prints of Oshkosh AirVenture too.. pretty incredible.
The photo's, (at least the ones I've checked) are just standard Google Earth stuff from up to 5 years ago as far as I can tell. I checked several places that I have Google Earth photos saved and this is the case.<p>Not much of a deal when you can get it for "free" on Google Earth
Why would anyone in Australia bother?<p><a href="https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/" rel="nofollow">https://qldglobe.information.qld.gov.au/</a><p>10cm resolution for free. A vast repository of historical imagery for free. I'm sure other states have similar.
I was not able to find a way to see (prior to purchase) the age of the stock image (is that info on the site?). Also if you order a new image how do you know it will be taken when no clouds (or is that just obvious they only take when not obstructed (and by how much)?
There is a market for ordering drone footage from random plebs arround the world.<p>Given the drones range is 7km radius and images can be so perfectly stitched.<p>I don't see that much appeal to small area via satelite.
> Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images.<p>Can you crop the images?<p>> nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves.<p>Can you sell a commercial report containing the images?<p>Can the images be published in an journal?
When I request new imagery my expectation is to have the copyright of the resulting image. Whilst I would have the need for high-resolution satellite images, I am not interested in acquiring licenses of any of them.
Hmm, I just bought an existing image of my local area at 75cm resolution, but that is not high-res enough to be interesting.<p>At least it only cost me $20. If I’d paid the full price for a fresh image I’d have been very disappointed.
How recent are the images for non-US? Next to my house there's a condo development since last year, and all I see (in the preview?) is green empty land.
48 hours from new image capture to being able to download it.
didn't see info on the time between requesting a new image and how soon it can be captured
The fact they charge differently for existing vs new images tells me that they will probably let you know which applies before purchase...<p>And if that's the case, I think there could be a market for a monitoring/alerting system to detect if anyone else orders imagery of your factory/port.
Some preview images are of very low resolution, anywhere I can find an example of the result of a high resolution one?<p>Also, what is the main target audience of this service?
This is a horrendous privacy violation. Being able to purchase high resolution, newly-created images of arbitrary locations is way over the line of an acceptable offering. This will be used to stalk and harass individuals. There's no mention on their website of how they plan to prevent this type of intrusive surveillance either.<p>Loads of people complain about the NSA's bulk data collection for the purposes of national security, but we barely see any opposition to bulk aerial surveillance imaging such as this, despite it being even more of a privacy breach due lack of safeguards around who can obtain and exploit such data.