Poor Image Quality 2015 Online Map "Capture" function for plotting?

[DWS44]

Hi Folks, 

I was excited to see in the 2015 products that Autodesk had added the capability to "Capture" the Online Map Images in order to be able to plot them, but so far, I'm finding the quality of the "capture" to be rather poor and nearly unusable (the word pitiful comes to mind so far, actually). 

Prior to the capture, you can zoom in a see a nice level of detail in the aerial photos, but the "captured" plottable image is of MUCH lower resolution when covering a fairly large area, and the plots look terrible. Am I doing something wrong, or is Autodesk dumbing down the images intentionally to make them look so bad? (perhaps as part of the license from Bing or something?) I've tried seaching both here and Google, but not finding much on the capture function so far.

To explain further, I've attached two images to the post to show what I'm talking about. The first image "ScreenCap1..." is a screen capture from inside AutoCAD 2015 showing the difference in the "captured" plottable photo area (inside the yellow line) vs the original non-plottable live map image outside the capture area. The "captured" image looks terrible. 

If you select one of the images, you get another ribbon with some options for the image...one shows several quality settings from "Optimal" to "Very Fine". One would assume that "Very Fine" would produce a higher-resolution version; however my experience so far is that it is a minimal improvement at best. There is also another button that says "Reload". In that function it states that it will "optimize and increase the resolution of the images that were captured". Again, in my experience the "Reload and Optimize" improvement was minimal at best. The second attached image "ScreenCap2..." shows a comparison from the same area of a file at the native non-plottable image resolution, and versions of the plottable "captured" images when set to either "Very Fine" or after doing the "Reload and Optimize". As you can see, all of the "Captured" versions are pretty bad and nowhere close to the quality of the native map imagery.

So...am I missing something here, or has everyone else found the quality to be as bad?!? Is there a setting or variable somewhere else to control the resolution to use when the images are "captured"? 

[pendean]

'free' may be why the fuzzies appear once captured: we've never known a quality Sat Image to be free sadly. I look forward to the topic expanding further.

PS: would you benefit (if you need this feature often) from using MAP instead of plain AutoCAD?

[DWS44]

Thanks for the quick reply Dean...yeah, "free" was one reason I thought Autodesk may be intentionally dumbing down the images. Shame...this could be a very powerful feature. Guess I was just posting on the off-chance I was missing a setting or something. As for using Map, I didnt mention it in my original post, but I've tried the same thing in C3D 2015, and see the same thing in regard to the poor "capture" resolution...so it isn't just happening in Vanilla AutoCAD.

[Laurent.Pallares]

Hi,

There is a quite simple way to get reasonable display results

Then you will be able to set the Layout and print as DWG to PDF, and it should look as similar as the selected region.

Best regards

[DWS44]

Laurent: I'm not sure I follow your post completely, but it looks like you are simply suggesting that I try using the "Very Fine" image setting; however if you could take a minute to read re-read my post, specifically the second to last paragraph, you could see that I've already tried using the "Very Fine" setting, and found it to be little to no improvement. If you look at the second image attached to that post (ScreenCap2 - Capture Quality Levels.JPG) , you can see a comparison of the issue that I'm talking about.

In comparison to the level of detail that is obviously available on screen before the "capture", its clear that the "Capture" function is crippling the image, and is certainly not producing anything I would call "reasonable results" as you put it. Even at "very fine", a plot with a "captured" image looks closer to an abstract watercolor painting that an actual aerial photograph.

[Laurent.Pallares]

Good afternoon,

Have you tried to publish DWG to PDF from the layout, it should give a much better result...;)

Best regards

[jggerth1]

A week or so ago, an AUGI poster reported a similar issue - with the 2015 Capture being noticeably poorer quality thatn the uncaptured image.  However-- even though he uploaded his drawing, I was unable to reproduce the problem on my home PC running 2015.  The captured MapImage object was exactly as clean as the initial bing background image.  My results, on his drawing, were nothing like what he was seeing, or what you are experiencing.

Can you load a sample drawing, with geolocation set and a captured image stored in it?  I'd like to compare my results with yours.

Regarding Dean's suggestion of Map3D.....  What Map (or civil3D) will allow is the use of real, georeferenced orthorectified imagery instead of the Bing cruft that LiveMaps uses.  GeoMaps in C3D is not the same as MAPIINSERT, and is actually a poorer inmplementation of the Vaniila Geomaps feature.

With Bing Maps imagery -- positional accuracy and reliability is very poor.  With Acad 2014 locations were as much a two miles off!  2015 seems better, but a two to twenty meter positional error is typical.  I would strongly suggest, if you are doing anything where being right can matter,is to use the MAPIINSERT command with real georeferenced imagery from a reputable, reliable souce.  (In Florida, i use FDOT aerials -- you local DOT, County GIS Department, etc can provide them -- possibly at a cost).  Even if you have to pay for them they'll be cheaper than the lawsuits.

Bing imagery is fine if you are doing a county or parish level study and need a (very) roughly accurate aerial background.  It's not fine for design, and most certainly not adequate as a replacement for survey.  The genesis of bing (and Google/Apple maps) is designed for GPS locations, @ 10 meter accuracy.  Good enough to drive a car around without getting lost, or steer a boat in a navigation channel, but not good enough to build a house on a lot.

Dean:  regarding free satellite imagery --  interestingly a lot of the Bing imagery is from public domain sources, e.g. USGS.  so in one sense, you've already paid for it via taxes.  but it's a lot easier to run the Livemaps feature than dig through USGS and handle all the grunt work yourself.

[DWS44]

Laurent:  I went back and tried publishing using DWG to PDF and the results were the same...very poor image quality from the captured image. No different than the plots to our physical plotter. No better, no worse.

JGerth: Thanks for the response and offer to take a look. I'd love to find out its just something on my end...seems like there'd be more noise if everyone was experiencing this...plus sounds like you arent seeing the same problem. It will be interesting to see if you have better luck with my file.

I've attached a sample drawing...the same one that I used to make the "ScreenCap1" image in my original post. Incidentally...I certainly agree with you on using proper sourced, georeferenced, imagery for anything requiring great accuracy. My hopes for the GEOIMAGE tools were simply to fill in for the quick "Hey...can you toss an image behind the linework in that <fill in the blank> exhibit?" where accuracy isn't as big an issue as just "making it pretty". hehe

[jggerth1]

I've tried the comparison with your drawing, and then created a new blank c3d drawing of the same location, using the same coordinate system.

And I'm seeing similar results.  As soon as I capture an image, the image appears to 'jump' slightly, the becomes more pixelated, losing quality, Vanilla Acad vs c3d give me more controls to play with, but the loss of quality is noticeable in either application.

I'm disapointed, and a bit puzzled as to why the earlier run-thrus trying to replicate this ( inLouisiana) didnt show the problem, while Virginia did?

Heck - if Clipping Tools in win7 can do a capture w/o losing quality, there's no good excuse for Geomaps to do so.

[Laurent.Pallares]

Hi everyone,

I can also reproduce this issue, the image will be blured as it is converted to an image, and it's not anymore a link to bing map.

I will log a wish for improvement to the developpement team in charge of this feature.

Thanks for all the precious feedback.

Yours sincerely,

[jggerth1]

thanks for following up Laurent.

Note on your logging -- the quality loss is particularly problematic on Road or hybrid view -- the road name and other text that's part of that display becomes completely illegible,

[DWS44]

JGerth: Thanks for taking the time to try it out in my file, at least confirming that I wasnt making it all up and that it was a real issue.

Looks like I'll be crossing this feature off my list as being unusable (for my needs) until Autodesk finds resolution to the issue. (pun intended)

[Laurent.Pallares]

Hi all, I just add this Geolocation link Hotfix to this Geolocation tread

Best regards,

[jggerth1]

Hi Laurent,  Is there anything in the hotfix that addresses the issue fo poor capture quality, or does it simply get the previous poor quality functionality working?

[Laurent.Pallares]

Hi JGerth,

I just do some test over this feature with the hot-fix applied over 2015 release and it is looking quite good in my first test.

It is true that if you select a full city or a country area and like to zoom one a house it will appear quite blurry as it is not designed to do so, I will recommend to upload a true geolocalized map to do so. but as an helpful zone selection is it truly helpful, I add two screen-shot about it:

[ssemonich]

Though this is a work around and not truly a solution, it works for large areas but at the expense of time. 

The quality of the aerial that you capture is based upon how far you are zoomed in.  Therefore, if you zoom all the way in, you get the best quality once captured, and if you set the aerial to very fine.  If you capture multiple aerials in a grid pattern while zoomed in, you can achieve high quality results for a large area.  As indicated, the downside is that this may take a long time depending upon the size of the area.  You also must maintain the same zoomed in state for each aerial capture.  If you do not, one square will be high quality and the other will be poor quality.  You also have to deal with the Bing logo at the bottom of each square.  

I normally use Labins.org to get my aerials; this process is also time consuming because you have to download aerials in a similar grid based pattern.  However, these aerials tend to be older and requires you do download them in .sid format, which is only good if you have 3D Map or ArcGIS.

[ihab_yamen]

Hello fellow,, the solution is simply taking many capture images so that they are small, such as next to each network,, and deal with each image alone .. and the highest accuracy when printing become one high resolution image,, .. see attached image,  as you see i reload one image and you can do that for all the image.  

[jggerth1]

Not 'free', we pay for it with our license costs.  Many (though certainly not all) of the aerials on Bing are Public Domain fromn the US Gov.

And capturing definitely degrades the visible image quality.  that's especially noticable when running hybrid and displaying road names.  What's readable on screen gets horribly pixelated as soon as it's captured.

Fortunately, I run Map/C3d -- and have access to generally decent aerials from DOT and most of the counties in my area.  Georgia sucks at providing them thoiugh..

[ryanlaughlin]

I am also having this issue. The aerial tool is nice when working in model space, but it is attrocious when trying to use it for any kind of preliminary maps or overviews of project areas, etc. This is a shame. Why even have the "capture viewport" option if its not actually capturing something useful for print? The whole point of a viewport is to print.

Please fix this AutoDesk.

[Badams]

Not only are the captured images poor in quality I'm finding that many Bing maps are 6 years old, even in large cities such as Boston and NYC.  This is unacceptable to our customers who demand up to date image's and mapping.   Makes me wonder why we're forced to pay for yearly subscriptions and updates and get 6 year old map images from ADSK and Bing.  😞

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