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Hi all!
I've done a fair amount of looking at satellite imagery and tracing stuff on the images. And with most satellite images on screen I have a problem: I just don't get the visual clues to get a 3D impression of the terrain. I think I've found out why that is by playing with satellite image printouts. If I hold the print roughly upside-down, usually I instantly get a fairly good 3D impression. Now why would that be? I don't know either, but there must be a reason for the hillshades in topographical maps being done as if the light was coming from the north-west, even though the sun usually doesn't shine from there except for a few very unusual situations. It seems to be the lighting which is easiest for the eye to get clues from. Try it out for yourselves - you don't actually have to print anything if you have google earth; they have the rotate feature and you'll see what I mean.
Now some editing for OSM relies heavily on satellite imagery, and being forced to do it north-up and with the sun usually somewhere between SE and SW is in my opinion a pain in the neck (from twisting it so as to get the 3D clues ;-)
I wonder if it would be technically feasible to add a rotate map feature to JOSM etc.? I think editing would be much easier that way.
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I guess the technology will improve further in the future and with more better satellites the 3D impression will get better, even without further manipulation.
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3D Terrain is great in modern Avionics for the aviation industry too, like the Synthetic vision by garmin, I can see this technology being relevant for other applications too. Seems very sophisticated despite being fairly new.
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