What really goes on in the Microsoft Vexcel offices in Boulder? I've never made it down there to see first hand, but they boast this technology to robotically model and texture the 3d city scapes you see in Virtual Earth from aerial imagery. That sounds way too hard. For all I know they're fronting a sweatshop of trained monkeys working 16 hour days twiddling AutoCAD, but either way the results are quite impressive.

They also design, manufacture, and sell a line of specialized cameras for aerial imagery acquisition, the latest of which is the Ultracam D. Who says Microsoft is a software only one trick pony? We've got the Microsoft Mouse, a nifty GPS device, and now a line of digital cameras with an optical resolution of 11,000 horizontal pixels :-) The Ultracam FAQ has some more interesting stats.

But back to the real point of this post - the image quality that at the end of the day we all really care about. The imagery that is starting to feed into Virtual Earth from this thing is just absolutely amazing! The resolution is nice, but its the vivid color and razor sharpness that make the image come to life. Check out this scene of Dolphin Stadium in Miami where the Superbowl is taking place Sunday -

compare it with other imagery on our site, or anywhere else on the net and you'll see what I'm getting at. Or this more everyday urban scene from Miami Beach. Its all pretty subjective, but I personally haven't seen anything this vivid online yet in ortho imagery. I'll ask one of the Vexcel folks to write some more details about the end to end steps to capture and process the imagery. I'd like to learn a lot more about what goes into this.

on a tangential note, here's the website of Keystone Aerial, one of the flyers using the Ultracam D. I like this page of images opportunistically snapped while contract flying. This shot of Mt. Rushmore is my favorite - they couldn't have had more dramatic lighting if they were directing the show