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The new Google Maps pulls in color data from satellite images so you can now see things like Mount Rainier.
Google / Ron Amadeo
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Iceland is now a lot greener.
Google / Ron Amadeo
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You can now see Croatia’s mix of beaches and greenery.
Google / Ron Amadeo
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I’m not sure how these next two photos are too square. Here is Arizona, which is brown, so the map turns brown. Cool.
Google / Ron Amadeo
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This map with Morocco and the Sahara desert is also brown and desert, but here the map is … gray? Huh?
Google / Ron Amadeo
Do not be surprised if Google Maps suddenly looks different. Google has announced a redesign of Google Maps’ standard map set, which will now pull color data from satellite images. Google published a few before-and-after comparisons, which we have aligned with the source satellite imagery in the gallery above.
The company is also tweaking the color palette for a more vibrant map – ocean blue is blue, forest green is greener, and the map now even shows snowy mountain peaks in white and barren land in brown. The world is a big place, so of course this happens algorithmically. Google explains:
Google Maps has high definition satellite imagery for over 98% of the world’s population. With a new algorithmic technique for color mapping, we can take this image and translate it into an even more comprehensive, vivid map of an area on a global scale.
How exactly does this color mapping technique work? First, we use computer vision to identify natural features from our satellite imagery, and look specifically at arid, icy, forested and mountainous regions. We then analyze these features and give them a range of colors to the HSV color model. For example, a densely covered forest can be classified as dark green, while an area of patchy shrubs may appear as a lighter shade of green.
Previously, the base map was only always gray (normal land), green (vegetation and parks), and blue (water). The great addition is the coloring of dirt and snow. It is not exactly clear what happens to the normal ground color. Arizona is now very brown, which makes sense when Google says it now “accurately reflects its desert landscape.” But another slide shows Morocco and a piece of the Sahara Desert, but that’s … still gray? It looks like there are still some bugs to work out.
Google says the new color scheme will start this week.
