A lot of people have been emailing me about the satellite and aerial imagery in Virtual Earth, asking why it isn’t as good as the imagery in Google maps. Hmmm. In some areas, it seems to be a lot better actually. Here are a few examples:

Dodger stadium as seen from Gmaps Sort of like a view from the bleachers. Here is the same place as seen in the Virtual Earth. ahhh. Box seats behind the dugout.

Here’s one of the most famous landmarks in the world as seen in gmaps. If you squint you might be able to make out the Hollywood sign. And the same place in VE. Wow. You can really appreciate the difference there.

Here’s a shot of the Pentagon in VE. Pretty cool – you can actually see office windows inside the concentric rings. Compare this with the view on Google maps.

Head north to Iwo Jima in Virtual Earth

Check out Alcatraz Island on Virtual Earth

It’s clear that there are a lot of cities and locations where the aerial imagery in VE is as  good or better than anything online today. Are we perfect? Of course Not! We know there’s a lot of room for improvement, and that’s exactly what were up to. The bottom line is that aerial imagery, like vector map data, varies from geography to geography and from vendor to vendor. There are always going to be places where maps and imagery in the Virtual Earth look better than they do at other web sites, and vice-versa. But one thing is for sure – The MapPoint team here at Microsoft is really committed to making the online mapping experience better and better. We’re already working with our imagery partners to incrementally improve the maps you see in Virtual Earth and over the coming weeks you’ll see a lot of these improvements rolling out. And for a look at some of the insanely high res stuff we’ll be giving you soon, check out this preview of 'Eagle Eye' view from Chandu’s blog.