Why would they need to come out with an "improved version" if they have all these pictures of the "globe" earth from various satellites? If there was really a satellite 22K miles away filming the earth all the time it should be REALLY easy to put that footage into an interactive format.
Really, now?
To restore lost context, "
they" are the infamously
evil google.
"Why [...] an
improved version"? Let's ponder some possibilities, most of which are not at all unusual:
• An overly ambitious project?
• A design that failed to
scale up to produce a reliable
ideal version?
• Inability to squeeze the
ideal version of the product into the prescribed (i.e.,
target) amount of memory?
• Loss of
key project
staff, especially fascinating if punitive ejection for noncompliance with experimental or oppressive
social agendas, most notoriously their
rainbow dogma(ta)?
• Other failures that should remind academics and above-the-fray corporate management that successful software development involves a
lot of
art that can't be replaced by
capital investment.
If you dismiss
all of the possibilities above, there are probably at least a few of us CathInfo members who would greatly appreciate learning about
your experiences with
developing software for
interactive computer graphics.