Microsoft is unveiling its integration of detailed 3D imagery into its Virtual Earth this afternoon (see Live.com). US users with Vista-ready Windows computers and IE 6 or 7 will be able to navigate through an aerial view of 15 select cities with enough detail to discern the texture of buildings and read clickable billboards from the likes of Fox, Nissan and John L. Scott Real Estate. Virtual Earth 3D is expected to expand to cover up to 100 cities around the world by the end of next summer.
Unlike Google Earth, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth is experienced directly inside of IE as part of search results. Search team member Bobby Figueroa told me that the 3D functionality would be useful to many business customers as an integrated feature in offerings like Zillow’s real estate search. The imagery was taken from planes and processed with proprietary algorithms.
He also told me that advertising was being integrated into Virtual Earth for the sake of realism. In real life, soda machines don’t appear with black or white labels – they say Coke or Pepsi on them, he told me. To insufficiently brand Virtual Earth would apparently be irresponsible in some way, perhaps as an artistic or cultural loss. Figueroa said that billboards would have to prove compelling to users or they would not zoom in close enough to view them in detail and click through. Figueroa would not discuss the particular relationship with the first wave of advertisers but said that the company would evaluate all methods of ad sales and tracking in order to determine what worked best.
I certainly have no inherent objection to advertising, but I’m not excited about it being the first thing I see when I gain the ability to see a new environment in 3D. It seems like a cynical priority when a dazzling new technology is first rolled out. I don’t know what I expected though, so I’ll wish Vista-ready Windows owners who use IE the best of luck in enjoying the use of a newly 3D virtual world.
You’ve also got to wonder if anything will ever come of the really impressive Street-Side preview, which we wrote about in February. See also the 3D photo fly through app in the works in Live Labs, called Photosynth.
In addition to integration of Virtual Earth with search and some browsers, another thing you have to give Microsoft credit for is seriously improved picture quality. See the following two shots of San Francisco, Virtual Earth 3D on the left and Google Earth on the right. Lastly a very nice looking shot found on the Virtual Earth blog. Google’s got some catching up to in regards to image detail. I’m going to try to grab an image of a billboard when I can.
Sniff, it doesn’t install for me
An error occurred downloading the following resource:
http://go.micro...k/?LinkId=72621
Date: 11/6/2006 2:36:32 PM
Get ready for a new dimension in search: “The page isn’t redirecting properly”
Congrats to the Virtual Earth team for delivering this feature right inside a browser!
“I certainly have no inherent objection to advertising, but I’m not excited about it being the first thing I see when I gain the ability to see a new environment in 3D”
Thats funny, thats exactly the response of most video game players to excessive in game advertising in VW enviornments…
Wow! This rocks. I don’t mind ads myself. They are part of the culture
The billboards are currently kind of cute. I think that sort of advertising will be a serious game eventually – having that kind of geo-precision will be very useful.
It’s interesting, but I’d vastly prefer a desktop client AS WELL.
Marshall, I think I saw a billboard atop TransAmerica building.
Eyecandy uselessness exemplified to the max !
Brought to you by MSFT
This is stunning. Beautiful work.
Marshall, I grabbed a couple of nice screen grabs of the billboards on my site. They are plastered all over the Seattle map.
whoaa..great details.yep,agree with u amit,now advertising is a part of our life~:P click for http://www.futu...com/…nice shots fren
Tried to install a few times, and wont work. It keeps install and uninstall. Only works on IE.
The higher quality image is Boston if anyone was wondering.
Microsoft really did a nice job with this tool. http://ze-blogg...al-3d-real.html
It’s pretty hard on the browser, it crashed IE7 a couple times in a row for me. Now Google needs to finish their ActiveX (and make it embeddable):
http://members....TimeScript.html
If only the damn thing would load.
This really rocks!
Good stuff. We’ll see how it looks in Eppraisal.com.
The 3d imagery within zillow is so great, I can’t wait to see how much better this new version is. I live in the middle of nowhere, and they still had 3 aerial shots of my house with amazing detail … you could even see me in the backyard mowing!
This is a nice step up on Google’s version. It’s rather unfortunate that there seems to be so many people having difficulties. The install went smooth and painless for me.
Grrrr. Not available outside US seemingly. Not even to install – I’m not expecting worldwide 3D yet but it would be nice to look around.
The 3D imagery and the detailed graphics truely rock. It will be interesting too see how Google reacts to this
I found a few billboards and saved them to a collection so that you can see for yourself. Much better than a screenshot. I’ve never used the live.com maps before; are the shareable collections a new feature or an old one? http://maps.liv...AC6D022238E8D01!133
My impression is that it works very well, although after a few hours of sitting in the background iexplore.exe is using over 500MB of memory.
The loading is painfully slow on my 4M DSL link and the the rendering
is killing my machine. To run, you really need:
1) 1G+ memory to make it reasonably usable
2) 1.5GHz CPU
3) High speed connection (a city downloads about 100M data)
Much of the photo work is being grabbed from an upstate ny company called Pictometry. http://www.pict...rticles/wsj.asp
What will Microsoft think of next? Buying YouTube?
It looks really cool. Unfortunately, google still gets the last laughs because they wowed the consumer with Google Earth and this one looks like a better version of that.
Also, whats the value for the consumer? Is this going to be used by regular consumers or is it more for real estate, architects, geologists, etc? ok, I see that someone can see their house visually with this but what else – maybe integration with Zillow?
On live.com it advertises “beautiful city views” – and then I am redirected to a search box. Then nothing. What’s next ? Nothing .. what’s up ? Am I clueless ?
Cool. I can see value for the real estate industry.
Yes, very cool, but IE only = completely unacceptable.
Talking about the billboard ads, I wonder if the language used will be localized to the region shown or to the user’s preference. For example, since I’m fluent in Spanish and English, I would like to see the ads in either of these languages even while browsing through Asia.
Hey – Just wanted to comment on my total experience with this product
time: 11:00 am –
First visited live.com and tried it with firefox – No go! – Only works with IE7
- I switched over to my desktop which has IE7
—- Installing now … (Time 11:03)
- After a few minutes the installation box comedically notes ” the installation is taking longer than expected…”
-now installing the 5.28MB file called virtualEarthEd.msi
Installing the program (make sure to uncheck) make live my default search and install a live search on my start menu
- At first It comes to mind this is probably going to get downloaded atleast 200-300k times, this might have some spyware in it; also it you can assume that 50% of those people now have Live Search as there default image.
- IMHO – Fun , but just a clone of Google; Not any more useful
Question: I thought google had this cornered when they bought first rights to the Satellites? any ideas ?!
I can’t setup it in China , maybe some languages or locations unsupport ?
Good stuff. Seems to me this kind of project is essential groundwork for any search engine looking to the future. Regards Google “cornering” (comment above), I can’t see how anyone can have the sole rights to this – anybody can make a map, even be it a 3D virtual. MS have done this part well, apart from limiting to IE only, but maybe they should concentrate on sorting out their search results now…!
أريد الإطلاع على أبوضبي , مدينة العين , إمارة دبي ………الخ
I am Guessing the back end processing of
Microsoft virtal 3D. Yahoo maps, Google Earth and Maps.
Their accuracy Levels
1. Yahoo uses Teleatlas and Navteq Database for US. Since they the best vector data Producers. Coding is Done in Linux Shell Scripting, Java Platform in AJAX( Asynchronous Java Script and XML) for front end.
Coding is done in customized Markup Language Like KML
The data acquired from Teleatlas or Navteq is Also on Java Platfrom. Specailly Softwares Like Bison in Navteq.
Images: For rectificataion they use IDL ENVI or Erdas which supports the Huge raster data.
Steps involved:
1. Rectification in Image processing Package as mentioned above.
2. Digitization or drawing id done manually or from Data providers
3. handling of data field. each entity hold at least 10 Data fields
4. Every thing is done on Linux for data security and quick access.
5. After internal check by employees of that Locality. they publish it.
6. Data fields POI’s(points), (ploygons) and Linear Features
7. Concept of Deciding DOT( direction of travel)
– High Fuction cLass to Lower Function classes i.e freeways, Highways … Local Roads.
8. Technology– it is not too Difficult to Learn.
about images:
—Old Quick bird images of area of Interest (AOI).
— Rectify and Place the images.
—make them as smaller tiles so that zoom in and zoom out becomes faster though it comtions pyramid Layers.
Hello
i
Bye
Hi all!
p
Bye
good for student
fuck your dad !!!
Advertising in Virtual Earth ???
es geht auch anders !
http://www.virt...erbeflächen.de
Fa. Earth Design Germany
Interesting overlook on Microsoft’s virtual world attempt to show the real world in a 3D perspective.
I like the 3d effect