For this survey, I’ve tested each platform by attempting to create an aerial time-lapse of Moscow, focusing on the longest chronological coverage, highest resolution, and other helpful features like displaying the dataset used or photo dates for viewer reference.
Here are a few freely available resources and their different strengths and weaknesses, beginning with platforms with non-functioning elements or difficult to navigate interfaces:
| Platform |
Strengths |
Weaknesses |
Directions |
| Google Earth Pro |
|
This is a desktop version of Google Earth where some older online references will point you towards to create aerial time lapse videos, but this appears to be an outdated model that Google seems to have abandoned for more contemporary platforms Specifically, the “Movie Maker” tool that would carry out this action no longer appears to be functional |
|
| USGS Earth Explorer |
This database contains material that predates many of the other resources, sometimes as far back as 1950, whereas the other platforms only reach as far back as 1980. |
Because only still images can be exported, the time lapse functions need to be done manually in another application like Adobe Premier or AfterEffects Additionally, as an outsider to GIS, I found the interface unintuitive as well as some of the semantics, including the "footprints" for boundaries and coverage areas, "scenes" for individual images and "cart" for the download list even though most of the them are free to use for non-profit purposes. |
|
| Google Earth |
- Very simple to use
- Good date range, reaching all the way back to 1984 in this example task
|
- Very poor resolution
- No video export functionality
|
- Enter your location
- Select the Layers button on the bottom left hand of the screen
- Toggle the time lapse button
- Adjust speed as wanted
- Screen capture to create video
|
| ArcGIS World Imagery Wayback |
- Better resolution
- Even more intuitive controls
|
Historical reach isn’t very far; only about 10 years in this test |
- Enter location
- Press the play button and adjust speed as desired
- Export video directly or upload to cloud
|
| Google Earth Engine |
- Because the platform runs on whatever Javascript code you create, the platform is a complete sandbox of possibilities where you can create still, moving or interactive maps
- Utilizes over 1000 public datasets
- Good documentation, example code and active community
- Easy exporting directly into Drive folders
|
Requires knowledge of coding and, even still, can be very difficult and time consuming to iterate code depending on project needs
Possibly because of the breadth of material, one frequently encounters errors occurring from combining datasets with differing digital color values, differing metadata and incomplete images
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- Discussed in the following section!
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