MapForums

Yikes! Somehow this year old thread at SpatiallyAdjusted was resurrected leading to some heated debate and mud slinging. No need to get yourself dirty (unless you're in it for entertainment value!) as I'll clear the air about 3D models and modeling in Virtual Earth in this post. And as a bonus, check back here tomorrow for insight into a completely killer new feature for those of you developing your own web applications with Virtual Earth 3D.

Here are the 2 biggest points of contention I see in the Spatially Adjusted thread-

1. Breadth vs. Depth. At the time the thread was begun, Virtual Earth contained 10's of thousands of fully textured 3D models. this gave VE* broad citywide coverage quickly of pretty good quality, but there was no way to insert your own higher quality models and creations. If you wanted to replace our textured empire state building with your own finely tuned version, you couldn't do it. likewise, if you wanted to insert a bridge or your house that we didn't already have, no dice. We had Breadth, but not Depth. This changed last year when we partnered with Dassault to deliver a simple to use 3d modeler integrated directly into Virtual Earth. Now you can model and create any building or object you can dream up and make them available to other virtual earth users as well as in your own applications. with this development we now have breadth and depth covered. If you haven't tried it out yet, give 3DVIA a spin and see what you can cook up.

2. Birds Eye Availability outside of Virtual Earth. First off, what is it? Birds Eye imagery, sometimes referred to as oblique imagery, is unique for a few reasons -

• Its the highest resolution aerial imagery available online
• The angle is about 45 degrees to the Earth, not 90. the advantage is that you can see the sides of buildings and features instead of only their rooftops
• Each point on earth is photographed from north, south , east and west providing 4 actual views of a point.

Here is a link to Disney's Tower of Terror as an example. Use the rotation tool at the upper left of the map to rotate around. Or try out this stunning look at Brussel's Atomium. We partner with companies like Pictometry and Blom to acquire this imagery. It's expensive to fly, capture, and process the imagery and our partners expect to be compensated for their work. Our license to use this imagery includes the Live Search Maps website, Virtual Earth's 3D control, and third party applications built with our API. If you want to use this imagery in your applications you can do so with our API or you can license it directly from the previously mentioned suppliers. Other uses of the Birds Eye imagery from Virtual Earth Servers would be in violation of our license and you should stop doing that else a swarm of Microsoft lawyers in black choppers will be beckoned to hunt you down and make you stop At the end of the day, we're a platform company providing tools for developers to integrate our maps, imagery, and location services in their own applications. If you need to use our Birds Eye imagery in an application that goes beyond our terms of use, email me at stevelom a t microsoft d com

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