The first images were released and the quality is indeed as expected. The $500 million satellite can take images at a 30 centimeter resolution of the ground. The snaps are so sharp and full of details that due to U.S. government imposed restrictions on high-resolution satellite imagery the company is not allowed to show full-resolution images yet.
The images which were made public are the 40-centimeter versions. In terms of quality these are comparable with satellite images from Google Earth. Some fans of satellite imagery have already compared some of images taken around the airport in Madrid, Spain which were provided by Digital Globe with the same images from Google Earth. By doing overlays of the two versions they concluded the quality is just about the same. Web
You can find Web-optimized version of two of the first images DigitalGlobe below or you can read DigitalGlobe’s blog post and view full-resolution versions here.
