Silver™

Anyone play around with it?

Except for using silverlight, it could be better than google maps.



http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/

Ken1997TL

Interesting, I can (sort of) see my house on there but not on Google Maps.

jupitersolo

Looks pretty good.

The main thing I like about Google maps is using the mouse to move around and zoom in and out. I hate when I have to use map controls for that. But most maps are like this now.

Ken1997TL

I like how it shifts to a 3d perspective when you zoom in, very nice.

jupitersolo

I can see mine, pretty clear. It's a recent image as well, my TL is parked in front.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

oh cooooool

sho_nuff1997

iTrader: (2)

Pretty cool how you can fly through the streets and the UI is better than google maps. They still have quite a bit of catching up to do, though.

Ken1997TL

I got lots and lots of trees hiding my place

sho_nuff1997

iTrader: (2)

I can see an extremely pixelated version of my house. It's a slightly worse view than google's. Living in the boonies, FTW!

jupitersolo

I'm surprised that the image within 10 miles of your house isn't just "missing".

Ken1997TL

That might eliminate about a million people or so

Moog-Type-S

Suite!

hornyleprechaun

Birds eye view is cool.. it selected 2 houses down from mine though.

hANDYcaptd

iTrader: (5)

It seems a little smoother than Google. Birds eye is definitely a major plus over Google.

Anyone else think the rotate feature is kind of...backwards?

The old birds eye, when you hit the rotate button, say counter clockwise, it would rotate from the camera POV. Now, it rotates the map itself...

Bdog

Everything I've looked up in Bing sucks so far. Older maps compared to Google and I don't get nearly the zoom detail or street views that I currently have in Google.

Silver™

^^^

Remember it's still in beta. So it might be a while before all areas are updated.

Try playing around with the map in Los Angeles to see the functionality it offers.

#1 STUNNA

They've integrated photosynth into maps now too. So play with that it's pretty cool. you can try that out by clicking on explore in 3d in the upper left corner of the page. If you don't see any photosynths in the area you're looking at then zoom out until you do. they'll appear automatically when one is in your field of view.

5o9

Awesome

Birds eye is same as the old map, but works different and much better, used to be just two zoom choices.

Sclass88

For Bird's Eye View, nothing beats windowslivelocal.com

Whiskers

Mine is broken..Cant get the Silverlight windows to go away...

Slinks

A couple of the cool not obvious features:
When you zoom in, the first shift from a map to an birdseye view, is actually a 3D model and not an photograph.
http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#/l1m3gfldch42bbqw


The Streetside is cool. And if you open up one of the applications using the orange arrow, (photosynth, twitter, local lens for example), you can then see those pins on the street.
http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#/rq5h21b0htgjw64k


I agree it would be nicer if it didn't need a plugin to run. But alot of the features in it can't be done in Html / Javascript -- just like Google Maps StreetView uses Flash.

The blending of images as you zoom / pan around the map can't be done in Javascript (you see in javascript, unless the image is cached it displays a blank tile) whereas in Silverlight, as you zoom in, it blends the lower res image with the higher res image that its downloading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Zoom).

The Javascript map (bing.com/maps) was also updated about a month ago, but the Silverlight map just blows it away in my opinion

You can use the mouse in bing maps beta as well.

-Slinks (an msft employee)

Slinks

windowslivelocal = bing maps. Its the same, but cooler now (see the addition of the 3d models linked to in my previous post and the streetside)

doopstr

Better resolution pic on my house than google, but the pic is older than what google has.

Scrib

Not bad.

#1 STUNNA

You work for MS and you haven't been in my Windows 7 thread!

https://acurazine.com/forums/technology-16/microsoft-windows-7-office-2010-thread-693445/

err....nevermind you've posted twice in there

95gt

Very smooth. I like how it changes maps. Man, my area is still old as hell in the picture. My house isn't even there yet even though it was built 2 years ago.

Slinks

Haven't been visiting this board as much as I used to. But now that you know, feel free to message me if u have any msft questions

jupitersolo

Be careful of him slinks

stogie1020

#1 STUNNA

FiftyFive

Wow, very cool. I can see my house perfectly, in a bunch of different angles too! I can even see my car parked outside of my job at work. Although it was one of my older cars, the aerial is at least a yr+ old.

So far better than google maps.

Looks like they don't have Edinburgh, Tristan Da Cunha on the map yet. Google/Map it, really unbelievable.

#1 STUNNA

MS just showed off some new really cool stuff for bing maps at TED! Taking geo-tagged Flickr picks and making photosynths out of them, live video feed built into maps and WorldWide Telescope integration!!!! I WWT!

<object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BlaiseAguerayArcas_2010-medium.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BlaiseAgueraYArcas-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=766 &introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuratio n=2000&adKeys=talk=blaise_aguera;year=2010;theme=a _taste_of_ted2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=the_c reative_spark;event=TED2010;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BlaiseAguerayArcas_2010-medium.mp4&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BlaiseAgueraYArcas-2010.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=766 &introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuratio n=2000&adKeys=talk=blaise_aguera;year=2010;theme=a _taste_of_ted2010;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=the_c reative_spark;event=TED2010;"></embed></object>

Slinks

^^^ That was some cool stuff. The Live streaming video on the map was incredible. Hopefully the inside-the-building-view ends up all over the place.

#1 STUNNA

Yeah I'd like to know more about the video capability.

Moog-Type-S

So when does the deal go down, and google maps get swapped out for bing maps on my iPhone?

#1 STUNNA

probably never. bing doesn't have it's street view in very many places and plus this map requires silverlight.

03SSMTL-S

ive been using there birds eyes feature for quite some time

Moog-Type-S

bummer

Silver™

Massive points to Microsoft on this one.

Over the past three years, Microsoft has created a uniform, detailed map of the Continental United States and 17 countries in Western and Central Europe. The results are spectacular – a single view of about 7 million square miles, with relatively even lighting and height, at a granularity of about 30 centimeters of land per pixel of image.

It is an impressive home-grown undertaking – Google gets its images from many sources, and while they are decent, they change as you go from one location to another, or zoom in on something.

To do it, Microsoft developed its own highly efficient camera, and mounted it in several planes that were also loaded with 13 PCs for image processing. It then flew the planes north/south (for light standardization), in lines about eight kilometers apart, at 17,000 feet, shooting 220 megapixels every 2 seconds.

They’ve been quietly rolling much of this into Bing Maps for several months, and about 25% of the total is up, with more coming on every day. Total miles flown: about 730,000. Cost: about $130 million. No plans to do Asia as of now.

See the difference for yourself by playing around – zoom in, change angles — with these comparisons (sorry, once you click the address you have to click on “bird’s eye” in the drop down just above the map to get Bing’s version – Google still gets to its addressing):

Here are aerial photos of the Forbes headquarters at 60 Fifth Ave, New York, via Bing and Google Maps . Here is the “Hollywood” sign in Los Angeles in Bing and in Google .

Play around with the close-ups to the full effect of both services. In almost all instances I checked, there was indeed better, clearer information from Microsoft. The one exception, my own house, did have a slightly closer shot of the property, but that was clearly from different source than the other, more distant images.

Not only did Microsoft have to take and process a lot of images, it also had to correct for cloud cover, snow, and other impediments to a ground view.

http://blogs.forbes.com/quentinhardy...erial-victory/

Moog-Type-S

I prefer the Angry Bird's Eye View over the standard version