Newsletter Archive
August 2007
In the News
NASA Releases New Photosynth Collection of Endeavour
On Aug. 5, Microsoft® Live Labs announced an alliance with NASA to use Photosynth™ technology to create 3-D environments of space shuttle Endeavour and surrounding buildings at Kennedy Space Center in Florida before the shuttle's launch day. For the first time, viewers can experience unprecedented views of shuttle Endeavour on the launchpad, the interior and surrounding area of the Vehicle Assembly Building, and the return of the previous flight of shuttle Atlantis atop a 747. Photosynth is able to capture the depth and complexity of the shuttle’s structure, providing exclusive images to viewers around the world and giving them the unique ability to explore this NASA mission. The four shuttle Endeavour collections can be viewed at here. A video demo can be viewed at Live Labs: Photosynth.
Recent Updates – Virtual Earth
Recent Publishing of Aerial Imagery
Over the last few weeks, the Virtual Earth imagery team released several aerial imagery updates globally. In the United States, much of the data fills out outlying areas around cities where the Virtual Earth team has previously published super-high-resolution imagery from 3Di Technologies with imagery from GlobeXplorer LLC. For Paris, very high-quality aerial imagery is available to view in Virtual Earth from Interatlas, and level 18 imagery in Japan was refreshed. The team also updated a large amount of 1M satellite imagery from GeoEye around the world. More information is available at the team blog.
Virtual Earth-Based Demographic Visualization Demo
On Aug. 24, IDV Solutions, a Microsoft Virtual Earth partner, launched its Demographic Visualization Demo. With this release, IDV continues to provide impressive and innovative solutions for integrating Microsoft's Virtual Earth and IDV's Visual Fusion Suite offerings. Until now, demos of these solutions have not been readily available to the general public. More information on the Demographic Visualization Demo is available at Virtual Earth for Government blog.
Recent Updates – Live Search Maps
Live Search Maps Introduces New 3-D and Bird's-Eye View Cities
This August, Live Search Maps announced the availability of new 3-D cities and 105 new bird's-eye views. With this update, more than 15.65 terabytes of imagery have become available to Virtual Earth platform customers around the world. Two of the new 3-D cities include Montreal, Canada, and Toulouse, France, and the bird’s-eye updates included cities in both the United States and Europe. For European cities, the highest resolution of aerial imagery that Microsoft offers is available online and includes coverage of some of the most famous landmarks in the world, such as the Parthenon in Athens. A detailed list of cities with updated bird’s-eye views is located on the team blog on the Live Search Maps team blog.
About Virtual Earth and Live Search Maps
Virtual Earth
The Virtual Earth platform is Microsoft’s next-generation mapping and location service. It combines MapPoint Web service functionality with exciting new innovations around bird's-eye imagery[1], satellite and aerial views, map styles and usability, as well as local search. The Virtual Earth platform is an exceptional solution for businesses and enterprise customers.
Virtual Earth powers Live Search Maps, Microsoft's online local search and mapping Web site, but this technology can be in your hands, too, for your custom online application. More information about the Virtual Earth platform is available at Virtual Earth.
Live Search Maps
Live Search Maps represents an exciting component of Microsoft's Live Search vision, which gives consumers a deeply immersive local experience on the Web, where they can find, discover, plan and share relevant location information that is important to them. Live Search Maps is powered by Virtual Earth, delivering a core set of functionality that combines maps and directions, immersive bird’s-eye and aerial imagery, and local search. To try Live Search Maps for yourself check out Live Search, or, if you are interested in learning more about the service, go to Presspass.
Notes:
1. Available in many metropolitan areas.
