Updates

Satellite view comes to PopulationCircle!

You can now explore PopulationCircle with satellite imagery! Use the satellite/map button just above the + and − zoom buttons in the bottom right corner to switch views.

A little backstory: a user emailed me asking for satellite view here. My other site, PopulationGuessr, already had it, using imagery from ArcGIS. At the time, I replied that I was already close to the provider's free-tier limit, so I couldn't add satellite imagery to PopulationCircle as well.

Since then, a lot more people have been playing PopulationGuessr, which is lovely to see! But that extra traffic completely blew past the satellite provider's free tier. To keep the game running, today I switched it to EOX's free satellite imagery.

The new imagery is older and lower resolution, but it is completely free to use, with no per-player or per-tile charge to the sites. That also means I can finally bring satellite view to PopulationCircle without adding to that satellite-map bill. One change made it possible to keep the game going and add the feature here too! :)

Thank you for the suggestion, and to everyone using and sharing both sites. I'm so happy people are enjoying them!