Vizrt Offer ‘FirstLook’ Breaking News

BERGEN, NORWAY: Vizrt recently launched a new service called DigitalGlobe Online that gives Vizrt customers access to DigitalGlobe’s satellite imagery library. Part of the DigitalGlobe Online service is FirstLook, a fast, cost-effective way to capture events from around the world.

As the name implies, Vizrt customers will get a “first look” at any digital satellite imagery captured by one of DigitalGlobe’s three commercial satellites. When an event happens globally, DigitalGlobe activates the service by tasking their constellation of satellites to the event location, taking new high-resolution images. Within hours these images are available to all DigitalGlobe Online customers with the option to purchase. Customers are sent notifications from Vizrt when an event collection is activated and can preview the collected content to decide if they want to purchase them.

Upon launch, the service was providing Vizrt’s DigitalGlobe Online customers with new images from the Olympics, a Typhoon in the Northwest Pacific and images from the Hungarian Grand Prix. Customers could also find images for older stories such as mudslides in Japan, wildfires in the American west and images from the civil unrest in Syria.

From within Vizrt systems—such as Viz World for branded, animated, template-based maps; Viz Trio for live graphics creation; Viz Weather; and Viz Artist for graphics and template design—customers can use search, purchase, and incorporate FirstLook images into their own content. 

Using Viz World 12.0’s map editing tools, including zoom, crop, pan, trim, or label, Vizrt artists can manipulate FirstLook satellite imagery to create animated maps. They can also string together images that DigitalGlobe satellites captured before, during, and after an event to show how the situation progressed over time.