[brokenmachine]

Pardon the stupid question, but how do you see the ground from the plane window? Most of the time I'm on a plane you can't see much of the ground, not nearly enough to get good aerial view images anyway.

Plus video quality is usually pretty crappy and you'd need heaps of post-processing to stabilize the video/remove dirt spots on the window, etc. I find it difficult to believe that this would work well with random people filming with their smartphones out a plane window.

[csteubs]

Not a stupid question at all! If you place your phone near the top of the window and angle it down, you'll see an image that looks remarkably like a satellite image and in many cases, better. I didn't believe it could be done either when I first started. A few friends working in the GIS space saw the images and started requesting them on frequent flights I took, and that's about when the lightbulb went off.

There are still a ton of variables that affect image quality. Type of aircraft, weather conditions, altitude, camera, seat position (sitting forward of the wing is slightly more advantageous because the inference engine doesn't have to correct for the exhaust blur in the aft), angle of view, residual engine vibration/dampening, time of day, flap/aileron position, the list goes on. Part of the go-to-market strategy involves making sure the hardware product and the inference engine handles a number of those limitations. Neither satellite nor aerial imagery is perfect, but you have a vastly higher chance with ~80,000 flights/day vs. the 300 commercial imaging satellites in orbit, with automatic cost savings in the millions that we can pass on to our customers.

Not-so-subtle marketing pitch--you can see a bunch of real-life examples on our socials @notasatellite.