November 06
Spaceland is Live!
The next major release of Virtual Earth is out the door and flowing to our production app server cluster. It should be live as you read this, but if you try it out and it appears to be the previous version wait a minute or 2 and refresh your browser to load the latest. This version gives you the choice between a 2 dimensional and a 3 dimensional view. To toggle between them, use the 2D and 3D buttons on the navigation control as seen in the image below. You can click the image to go to this view in 3D in Virtual Earth.
Pretty wild! 3 Dimensional virtual world navigation in a web browser. Best of all, Spaceland has been architected to work the way the web works, from the ground up. You can link to a place in Virtual Earth in 3d, the same as you would in 2d! just use the Share menu above the map to clip a permalink to your current view. Same as it ever was.
Here's a video showing some nice scenes in Virtual Earth. Keep in mind as you watch it that this is all being rendered in real time! there's no offline rendering going on. Better than the video, try it out. If you have an XBox or other DirectX game controller around, plug it into your USB port for a really unique experience.
What did I say the best part was? I changed my mind. the best part of this release is that it is supported with our javascript API. you read that correctly! if you can write the 5 lines of javascript to manipulate Virtual Earth in 2d, it is the same code to instantiate the map control and switch to 3d. Here's a snippet of code if you want to try it:
<script type="text/javascript">
var map = null;
function OnPageLoad()
{
map = new VEMap('map');
map.LoadMap(
new VELatLong(42.35822, -71.05309), 19,
'h', false,VEMapMode.Mode3D );
}
</script>
Here is a complete Hello World application to get you started. View source to see how easy it is to add the third dimension to your web mapping applications.
More on this in my next post in a few moments.
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