Virtual Earth / Live Maps: BirdsEye

Birds Eye Coverage Collections Updated

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 22:20:43 GMT

I finally had the time to update my collections of major cities with Birds Eye Coverage for the US and Europe. As I added cities I noticed that in MANY more cases, these cities mark the centroid of really huge coverage areas. For instance, it appears that every part of long island is now covered in 6 inch/pixel res or better, from Queens to the tip of Montauk. So even if your city or a city you are interested in viewing isn't on the list, check it out anyway - chances are good that if it is near a listed city, there may be coverage there.

Europe
http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=546E7E30AC2C5011!1193

United States
http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=546E7E30AC2C5011!250

Coverage in the UK has grown considerably as you can see here:

Leaning Tower of Pisa in Birds Eye

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:59:37 GMT

As predicted in my last post, much of today has been wasted surfing through Italy. I don't want the VE blog to turn into Birds Eye Tourist, but I had to post this amazing shot facing west of the Leaning Tower of Pisa:

Traditional Satellite and aerial imagery just doesn't pack this visual punch. I was going to create a Collection of great sites in Rome and throughout Italy, then I remembered posting this Collection to Pass The POI earlier in the year. At the time I said:

Bookmark this one and revisit when someday WLL has birds eye images in Italy!

Frank Gehry's Architecture via Birds Eye

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:26:48 GMT

A couple of posts last week on Birds Eye Tourist featuring two Frank Gehry designed buildings got me doing a lot more poking around at his accomplishments. I had come across a few others in the past, my favorite being the Stata Center at MIT (shown below). Here is a Collection I put together of a bunch more (15 or so, I still have a few to add) of his often mind bending works:

http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=2BBC66E99FDCDB98!7825

Stata Center at MIT

Center for Visual Arts at the University of Toledo

As I was checking them out it hit me how much the Birds Eye imagery added to the experience of researching these buildings. Its been over a year since we introduced BE in Virtual Earth and it's still quite unique on the web today. I guess I've gotten so accustomed to it that I take it for granted now. I compared our BE view to our ortho aerial imagery (and our competitors) and in almost all cases, the ortho view did nothing to help me get a good appreciation of the architecture. Being able to switch into Birds eye, then rotate the view in 4 cardinal directions added a lot to my search experience.

I find that I use aerial view (and plain old road view) for navigating quickly over large areas, then switch to Birds Eye view when I find an area of particular interest or a landmark I want to explore. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the big ones for me is that I like to navigate with the keyboard a lot, and the 'brady bunch grid' interface of birds eye thumbnails isn't conducive to rapid navigation. For all you Birds Eye fans - good news! We'll be releasing an update this month with a lot of Birds Eye improvements and among them will be the death of the grid :-)

13 new counties of Birds Eye coverage added to WLL

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:25:48 GMT

The Virtual Earth imagery team added 13 counties of new Birds Eye coverage to the map today. Here's a permalink to some of the cities and counties covered. Check out the eye-popping shot of Disney's Epcot Center in the image below! Ortho photos just can't do justice to landmarks like this.

here are a bunch more theme park locations.

Friday Afternoon Fun

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:57:12 GMT

Here's a permalink collecting some of my favorite Birds Eye shots for the week found at Birds Eye Tourist, MyFavoritePlaceOnEarth, and your emails. Odd sculpture, things caught in flight, NASCAR, and a Valentine's gift are among the scenes.

As a bonus time killer, here is link to the lake in Duvall In the film Firewall where Harrison Ford goes to save his family, after using Windows Live Local to track them down :-)

Have fun browsing, and keep the links coming. Post em here or email me at stevelom at microsoft dot com

UPDATE: Another viewer thinks that this is the more likely Duvall Location used in Firewall. After looking around, I have to agree. it is much more rural and has the cabin isolated on the open field.

Bostonist gets hip to Birds Eye

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:59:56 GMT

Bostonians have had Birds Eye coverage since the feature was launched in December. In his blog entry, Birds Eye On Boston, Jon Pettit does a bit of a head to head compare between the imagery in Google Earth and Windows Live Local. I don't think he realized that BE imagery can be rotated, allowing you to view stunning images like this one of the Custom house Tower facing West.

I think a lot of folks knew we had good coverage in Boston, but not a lot realize that we have most of the state of Massachusetts covered including places like these.