Mapbox Satellite Update

Mapbox has begun adding new satellite imagery from Worldview-3. Worldview-3 was launched two weeks ago and is already providing unrivaled satellite imagery of the Earth, at 31 centimeter (12 inch) resolution.

Mapbox has now begun to add satellite Imagery from Worldview-3 to Mapbox satellite view. The first update to the imagery is just a small 3 km² area around Madrid’s airport. This small update is enough to see that Worldview-3 can be used by Mapbox to provide detailed satellite imagery which is at least on a par with plane captured aerial imagery.

The Mapbox blog has a really nice map of the new satellite imagery, which is almost as impressive as the imagery itself. The map highlights some of the detail captured by Worldview-3 at Madrid airport using the new Mapbox GL mapping platform.

The map uses Mapbox GL's panTo, flyTo and rotateTo methods to seamlessly pan and rotate the map to new locations. These location updates are fired by the user as they scroll through the map sidebar. As the user scrolls through the information provided in the map sidebar the map automatically pans and rotates to show the location being explored in the text.