However, I have lots of time on my hands, and I enjoy Photoshop, so I thought I'd try my hand at making a custom overlay that some people may get some enjoyment out of!
I have taken a Google Maps image of Wooden Island in the South China Sea, and updated it according to the more recent satellite footage found here.
The island's tiny, of course, so you probably won't spend much time zoomed in on it, but as I got more and more obsessed with details it ended up taking quite long enough! I hope it'll be of interest regardless.
There are three overlays you can use - original (from GMap, with gradated edges), updated, and notes. The notes one can be activated after the updated one and will overlay it with information about the updated areas (taken from the article).
Download from Google Drive (~55MB)
Imgur link showing before/after and detail.
A few notes:
I have tried to copy the satellite photos exactly where possible. However, where the resolution has been too grainy, I've copy/pasted buildings of similar sizes from areas with a better picture. If you're better at interpreting satellite footage than me, perhaps there are buildings in places they shouldn't (barracks where berms should be or similar).
Some areas - especially around the runway - I had to invent entirely, to prevent weirdness. For example, the latest satellite photos show only a tiny portion of the runway, which is complete. If I had only have updated this portion, it would have looked bizarre next to the rest of the older, unfinished, runway picture. I've also altered some colours to make disparate areas fit together or look more realistic.
I'm still learning Photoshop, and I'm a military novice - there may well be mistakes and oddities. I'd like to think it's fairly good at least, so if you let me know of any errors, I may try and correct them (depending on how much effort it would take, I've been doing this for too long already!).
I think that's all! I hope at least someone out there enjoys this!
