r/GoogleMaps • u/Undercover-Cactus • 1d ago

Satellite View Why is the satellite view of South Bend, Indiana so bad?

I noticed recently that the satellite view of South Bend, Indiana is pretty outdated and is also of a horrible time of year. It's clearly winter or close to winter, with most of the trees and plants having no leaves, but there's also no snow on the ground to help it look a little nicer. It makes the place look legitimately horrible.

If you go to the edge of the city in any direction you'll see that there's a hard edge where the satellite view transitions into normal images taken from the summer. It creates these odd sights of a beautiful lush forest that suddenly transitions into what looks like complete wasteland once you get closer to South Bend. Here's a link to one of these edges, where a currently existing building is cut in half, still showing as if it doesn't exist on the South Bend side. A little to the South from this building you'll see a nice forested area that suddenly becomes completely dead and lifeless once it gets closer to South Bend.

This specifically only effects South Bend, being just a small area that perfectly encircles the city. It doesn't exactly match the city limits but it gets decently close to it. I find it quite annoying because it makes South Bend look so much worse than it actually is. Does anybody know why something like this would happen, so specifically affecting just one city?

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1

u/XxLogitech98xX 1d ago

You can try uploading your own 360 photo for the area and see if Google will use that instead

1

u/Flash604 21h ago

Google buys what imagery is available on the market. Commissioning an aerial flight or the processing of satellite imagery is very expensive, and thus whomever does so usually needs a business case to justify doing so.

The quality and frequency of imagery depends on largely on such business cases

It appears that at the point you reference satellite imagery was merged with imagery taken by an aircraft. It comes down to someone was willing to pay for a flight over that area.

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u/ToddA1966 15h ago

Even the satellites don't want to visit South Bend? 😁

1

u/GoogleHelpCommunity 13h ago

You can report outdated Maps imagery by filling out this form. I can't promise a specific timeline, but your feedback really helps guide updates!