Virtual Earth / Live Maps: The New Release of Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D is now Live! – when I was studying for exams this past week, Live Maps, the team I worked with and will be returning to in August, released a major upgrade. Here is what is cool to me, although there is a lot more.
- labels on “birds-eye” (oblique) imagery – this is actually very complex to do, from a technical standpoint, but it makes the imagery much more useful
- MapCruncher integration. I have played with MapCruncher a lot, it is an amazingly useful tool for putting raster/PDF maps onto modern web maps, and I have shown it off to a lot of people
- better viewing (and RSS feeds!) for user-added items everywhere
- improved display of KML files, which is especially important, as KML 2.2 is now an OGC standard geographic data format
- walking directions – people who know me in person know that driving directions aren’t very useful to me. Unfortunately, walking directions isn’t on Live Maps now, but it has been added to the API. So far it only uses a subset of the road network, no foot paths, parks, etc., so hopefully that will be improved upon
Hi
I can’t get MSN Virtual Earth at all. Not even through the Microsoft or MSN websites. Do you know how I can get this software without charge?
I have Google Earth Pro. Is VE better or worse? E-mail me.