Yesterday i promised a great new 3D feature for developers so here it is. In December a minor rev of the Virtual Earth Map Control v6 was released. For those that aren't software developers, the VE map control is a JavaScript library providing developers a unified interface for adding traditional mapping as well as 3D visualization and navigation to their web applications. [learn about it in the dev center] In this release we added the ability to load custom 3D models as part of a Collection right in your own web applications! This means that you now have end to end control of your own virtual world, from object creation (with our integrated 3DVIA Modeler) to placement and interactions with our Map Control. And since VE is easy to embed in web applications its now easy to bring your own custom 3D environment to your websites. The possibilities in industries like Real Estate and City Planning all the way to interactive gaming are amazing!

As an example, here is a Collection in Live Search Maps that I put together of three houses in the north end of Capitol Hill in Seattle. And here is the same collection of 3D models running in my own application or mashup.

Best of all, the code is trivial. if you know how to load a Collection, you already know how to load 3D models. All you do is add your models to one of your Collections, then load that collection in your Application in 3D. Virtual Earth will take care of fetching and displaying the models. View source of the app above to see the whole thing. here are the relevant bits -

function OnPageLoad()
        {   
          map = new VEMap('mymapcontroldiv');
          map.onLoadMap = EventMapLoad;
          map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(47.6277,-122.3166), 10 ,'h' ,false);
        }

function EventMapLoad()
      {
          map.SetMapMode(VEMapMode.Mode3D);
          var viewspec = new VEMapViewSpecification(new VELatLong(47.6277,-122.3166), null, 600, -37, 250);        
          map.SetMapView(viewspec);
          var l = new VEShapeLayer();     
                    var veLayerSpec = new VEShapeSourceSpecification(VEDataType.VECollection, "546E7E30AC2C5011!3308", l);    
          map.ImportShapeLayerData(veLayerSpec);
      }   

How do you add a 3d object to a Collection? Simple! In Live Search Maps, switch into 3D mode. Zoom into the area you want to create a model, right click, and choose 'add 3d Model'. then follow the instructions to install the 3DVIA modeling tool. Here are some getting started tutorials to jumpstart your modeling session.