AerialViewGenerator

Download satellite tiles and emulate the view from a camera mounted on a UAV pointing down (nadir). All the images downloaded are cached locally to preserve the remote server (so you don't get banned!).

Install it:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/ricardodeazambuja/AerialViewGenerator

If you don't know which tile server to use, install xyzservices:

$ pip install -q xyzservices

and

from aerialviewgenerator import AerialView
basemaps = AerialView.getBasemaps()

# check available free tile servers
print(basemaps.keys())

The available maps vary the zoom levels offered. Examples of tile server URL (you need to fill any fields besides the z, x, and y ones):

• basemaps['OpenStreetMap.Mapnik'] : https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
• basemaps['GeoportailFrance.orthos'] : https://wxs.ign.fr/{apikey}/geoportail/wmts?REQUEST=GetTile&SERVICE=WMTS&VERSION=1.0.0&STYLE={style}&TILEMATRIXSET={TileMatrixSet}&FORMAT={format}&LAYER={variant}&TILEMATRIX={z}&TILEROW={y}&TILECOL={x}
• basemaps['USGS.USImagery'] : https://basemap.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/USGSImageryOnly/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}
• basemaps['Esri.WorldImagery']: https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/{variant}/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}

Another place to check online is the Leaflet providers preview

Finally, search online and you will find other map tile servers that are available.

How to use it

Depending on your tile server, certain zoom levels will be available. Usually some non-free providers will offer a maximum of up to 20, but for the free ones the zoom goes up to 19. Below is an example for image from France (the only fields left in the baseurl were z, x, and y):

from aerialviewgenerator.aerialview import AerialView

baseurl = 'https://wxs.ign.fr/choisirgeoportail/geoportail/wmts?REQUEST=GetTile&SERVICE=WMTS&VERSION=1.0.0&STYLE=normal&TILEMATRIXSET=PM&FORMAT=image/jpeg&LAYER=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS&TILEMATRIX={z}&TILEROW={y}&TILECOL={x}'
avg = AerialView(zoom=20, baseurl=baseurl)

altitude = 300
bearing = 0 # world map, not local coordinates
fov = 60
lat, lon = 48.858327718853104, 2.294309636169546
img = avg.getAerialImage(lat, lon, bearing, altitude, fov, output_size=(512,512))
img.show()

Examples

The only example available, so far, is this notebook. You can test it directly on google colab:

Requirements

It uses requests and Pillow for the main stuff, and quad_sim_python for the UAV physics.