A quick question, that may be off topic.
Why will this thread automatically close in 14 days while others close 3 months after the last reply?
How long is this contract with digital globe? I am just asking so I know when I should check back to see if you realized your mistake and went back to google, then I might renew my license.
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Terrain is available in most locations. The one large gap is above 60 deg north latitudes. We currently have no terrain data there but we’re working on sourcing that. People are also finding holes and gaps in the data and we’re working on fixing those issues.
Where exactly are you looking? It would be good to know if you’ve found a hole or if you are outside of our current coverage zone.
I am looking around in Alaska so currently outside of what you’ve got.
It’d be great to know when terrain is available, specially up here. Is there a way to get notifications when new terrain is added?
I PM’d you.
Are you really asking why? Or just venting your frustration, because the information about the “why” of this change is posted and re-clarified several times over in the course of the thread above. If you’re frustrated, I get it, I’m frustrated too, many of us are, but own it, or dig deeper to better understand what’s happening. If you’re looking for workarounds there are some other threads going with discussions of options and how people are coping.
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Couldn’t agree more!
In the town where I work the municipal hav great maps, probably better than Google Maps have. I’d be very happy if I could select this as my map source when working in this town.
Here maps are from DigitalGlobe. Only in an even lower resolution.
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Regardless of the civility of the actual words, any post that includes an implied or explicit threat to sue the company hosting the forum can’t, in my opinion, be considered “civil”. I’d term them “Confrontational”.
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We may have to disagree on that one. Pointing out a wrongful act by one party that has legitimate legal remedies by others damaged by that wrongful act is not a threat. Or at least not an improper one. If the allegation is frivolous, meaning that it has no legitimate basis in fact or in law, that would be improper. But in this case, Trimble has very clearly breached its contract with many users of sketch up. And they have engaged in the highly deceptive act of blaming the degradation of their product on Google when, in fact, the degradation has clearly been caused by Trimble’s business decision to stop using Google’s product and use the inferior Digital Globe product instead.
<Sigh>
Have you not read Trimbles statement earlier in this (and other) threads that:
- Their provision of Google images was part of the buyout agreement?
- Their access was for free? (i.e. it cost them nothing!)
- Google has deprecated access to much of what they’d been using - like terrain data?
- That continued access to high quality images likely violate Google’s terms of service?
If you were in business, would you not substitute a different service when continuing with the formerly free service probably incurs significant cost (I know, that’s my reading of Google’s API pricing - and your opinion is different) that also likely violates Google’s Terms of Service?
I would. And I would do the best I can to insure the substitute service comes as close as possible to the original service (or even exceeds it if possible) within the limits of affordability - as I believe Trimble is doing.
No need to reply as I’m done with listening to you. I’m going to mute this topic after I post this. Note this is not a flag - it won’t affect you. It’s simply my choice to bow out of this topic.
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the DG images suck! The primary reason I got SketchUp was for their ability to sync google satellite images into the drawing space. My team depended on this feature heavily to create base maps for lawn conversion projects. This change was very abrupt and frankly I’m not interested in using SketchUp anymore unless they can provide similar quality images.
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And your profile says you have SketchUp Make ?
No more terrain data or satellite images regardless, for Make editions.
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Of course I have read Trimble’s explanations. And I am arguing that they are false. I have notified Trimble on at least three occasions that I believe their explanations to be false, have pointed out very specifically what I believe to be false about them, and asked them to clarify or specifically deny my allegations. So far they have failed to do so. And until they do so, I stand by my assertion that Trimble is not being honest with the SketchUp users in this forum.
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I also miss the good quality maps and agree that the transition could have been performed better. Maybe the transition time when users could use and compare both providers could have been longer so users had had time to adjust and plugin developers had had time to developer alternative solutions. Maybe a longer transition time had given Trimble more time to realize the current DG maps aren’t good enough and be able to find a solution before Google Maps were removed. I don’t know.
However I just don’t get what there is about Trimble’s explanation you can’t accept. If I’ve understood it correctly Google’s terms prohibit people from saving the maps and make derivative work. Their service only allows you to view the map. It’s not a question of Trimble not paying Google enough. The data isn’t for sale the way SketchUp needs it and never was. SketchUp could use the data in a way that was against the terms because Google owned SketchUp and then Google gave away the data for free for 5 years.
Yes, this could probably have been handled better by Trimble but no, they are not lying and making things up. That would be ridiculous.
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Something that has been discussed quite a bit among plugin developers is the requested ability to let extensions draw to the viewport without outside of active tools. Perhaps this could be a solution to the problem? If the ability to draw to the viewport without physically make changes to the model was improved a plugin could download the Google Map data to RAM, without saving to disk, and view it in the model. Then people could trace lines and place solar panels on top of the image without having it saved as a part of the model. The only thing that needs to be saved is the geo lcoation info so the same map can later be shown again, e.g. the next time the model is opened. Maybe that would be accepted under Google’s terms?
Edit: Perhaps the DG imagery could be permanently saved to the model and viewed even if the model is opened 10 years later with no internet connection while the Google imagery is only displayed when there’s direct access to the servers?
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A big problem for Skelion users. Digital Globe has poor resolution compared with Google.
I have a student license for school and a non-profit license for work. I don’t use any features that don’t come up when I load the software so I don’t know why you are accusing of me of using the software in a way that I shouldn’t. That’s rather rude. If this is what one should expect regarding customer support then I will not be supporting SketchUp again and will share my negative experience with everyone in my network. This is not something that needed to be brought up in a public forum.
I have sketchup pro
What I said is true regarding Make editions.
I suggest you then change your forum profile to match, so no more misunderstandings occur.
This is the public forum, not customer support. (In this forum anyone can respond to what you post.)
Customer Support is done through a separate portal.
https://help.sketchup.com/en/contact/customer-service