RSSMicrosoft Launches Virtual Earth 3D
By Nate Mook | Published November 6, 2006, 5:08 PM
Microsoft on Monday took the wraps off Virtual Earth 3D, a new version of the company's mapping application that enables users to "fly" through three-dimensional models of cities from directly within their Web browser - complete with virtual billboards.
The idea is that users can type a query into Windows Live Search and click on the "maps" tab to bring up results in a local context, with the ability to view two-dimensional aerial and bird's-eye imagery, or the new 3D models offered by Virtual Earth.
As part of the change, Windows Live Local is being re-branded Windows Live Search Maps.
The service is poised to compete with Google Earth, a standalone application that complements the search giant's online mapping service. But Microsoft says its offering takes the concept to another level, by bringing the virtual world closer to the physical world.
Instead of grey scale boxes of buildings like in Google Earth, Virtual Earth 3D uses photographs to create realistic, textured buildings. Microsoft says it developed the cameras it uses to capture the images in house, as well as creating an algorithmic program to build the textured 3D models.
However, because of the level of detail Virtual Earth 3D offers, Microsoft is launching the product with support for only 15 cities. On the list are San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Dallas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, San Jose, Phoenix, and Houston.
Not everything will be real, however. Microsoft is putting virtual billboards into the 3D cities it creates, enabling the company to sell advertising directly in these virtual worlds. For example, a billboard advertises Fox above the AMC Lowes cinema in San Francisco. Microsoft was able to accomplish this through technology it acquired from in-game advertising company Massive last April.
Microsoft says it plans to continually add new cities to the service, as well as expanding Virtual Earth to other countries. Developers will also be given access to the APIs in order to integrate the 3D cities into their applications, although this functionality will require a fee.
Virtual Earth 3D only works in Internet Explorer.
Well, this is at least one of the main reasons I so much hate Microsoft. For being the world's champion in IT constant stealing + modifying + selling as "their new much better / revolutionary / indispensable product".
As far as I know they did it with:
- MSDOS (see at least CP/M)
- DoubleSpace (see Stacker)
- Windows GUI and usage + behavior (see Apple)
- Active Directory (see Novell)
- FoxPro (see Asthon Tate's dBase)
- Excel (see Plan9)
- Word (see WordPerfect)
- Java (see Sun's Java)
- XDocs (see Adobe Acrobat)
- ... the list is longer, much longer
It really makes me puke ! :-(
[...]"Developers, developers, developers"[...]
Microsoft, I'd like to see your boss and those arrogant minions of yours bankrupted. In my opinion you are the living image of pure IT evil on this earth.
I'm so happy Europe is putting a leash on your neck. Wear it as tight as you can. Choking would be good. You truly deserve it.
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|Why the hate, you did that much research why did you stop?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA
Maybe for change you can say Google copied Microsoft
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|lol...people ignore conveniently though :)
too many sheep in the world...yay for the informed...terraserver!
It's like trying to listen to people convince you a platypus is a duck by mentioning only it's bill and feet...and ignoring all the facts that make it a mammal!
It's the best mammal in the world! :D
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|Nonsense this TerraServer thing isn't a 3D Map of the World. Granted both applications use satellite maps.
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|OMG - Well, I guess the 'big boys' had to do it sooner or later. It isnt a new concept...
Way back in 1999 I developed a similar map utilising 'inline VRML' technology and mapped the city of Sydney Australia in 'photorealistic virtual reality' using photo-triangulation methods coupled with CAD software.
Unfortunately I couldnt sell the concept to anyone and abandoned the project for lack of funds after many hundreds of hours work.
Its nice to see that the concept is 'out there' now, although the advertising is a bit 'in your face'.
If anyone still has a vrml plugin or cosmo browser installed, you can see my original 1999 concept test at : www.virtualmapping.com/sydvrml/
- i've just re-uploaded it for old times sake :)
Can I have a job please Microsoft?
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|I'm not impressed by the idea of these virtual billboards. *More* advertising?
It's getting to the point where I worry when I blink that some entrepreneur has tattooed an advert on the inside of my eyelids! ;-)
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|Why the hell didn't they just use a standalone program like Google? Seriously IE!!! We all know how bug free and stable IE is.
I saw a nice piece on CBS news the other day about Virtual Earth 3D. But of course it looked a lot better on TV. Personally I'm not impressed, the controls are awkward and really slow, actually they're painfully slow compared to Google Earth. But it's M$, I'm sure they can spend a billion to make it better than Google.
Can't wait For Google Earth v4.0. I love these battles.
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|competition good! Why would anyone want to see ONLY google do this? Not that MS will match or do any better. It will at least give google more reason to keep one step ahead = we all benefit.
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|chicken and egg...once again confuses many...and does it ever really matter. Afterall...walking on 2 legs was started by something...gets adopted because it might be better...or just logical progression
terraserver usa...
convince enough sheep who started what and who stole what and they'll believe it
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|Wow MS innovating once again ( == stealing the ideas of others, poor google )
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|Ahh...and don't forget google bought google earth from Keystone. Don't understand why MS gets bashed for bringing out new products and Googles gets the high five. I think they both have positives and negatives. Are they just supposed to sit around and not put out new stuff?
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|Google strives to get it onto the most important platforms, while MS forces you to use IE (that crap).
And of course its ok if you buy a company that created a innovative product and improve it. MS does the opposite, they just copy ideas and corrupt them by bundling or other means.
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|Google bought software no-one had ever heard of from a company no-one had ever heard of and brought it to millions.
MS copies it because they see dollar signs.
Google is the Great Liberator.
MS is just a profiteer.
/tongue-in-cheek
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|trying to bash/insult a company by lying is totally assinine. MS buys what it feels it should, it needs to steal nothing. If it can do better or believes it can than it will.
Blatant lying gets you nowhere...unless you are in the company of the same ilk who are just as ignorant.
Happy denial to you. hehe
Shame on MS for making a product for one of their own products...eh what? Oh, twilight zone for a minute :D
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|Errr where exacltly did i lie?
And by "a product" you mean they made "google earth".
This is how your last sentence should be:
Shame on MS for making Google Earth for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or Windows Internet Explorer 7 ...eh what? Oh, twilight zone for a minute :D
Indeed twilight zone by how bold MS rips of ideas from other companies. Do you know the next big thing that comes from MS? Yes a replacement for skype! How innovative!
And please don't get this wrong i love MS, windows, office, etc. but MS should still stop doing stupid things like that over and over again.
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|let's take a hypothetical...
using you for instance...if you were a software dev, and they took notice of your software and thought it was good, and more advanced in development than theirs, they would either approach you to buy or license.
People assume someone steals when it is just said, without fully realizing the category with which you are dealing...computing. Computing has an innate level of convergent theory, much as anything else.
If you really truly want to understand this, just look at the people and company most envied or despised, in this case MS and Bill Gates. If we want to apply your logic and assumption, then everyone who made PC hardware/software for consumers ripped off MS and Bill Gates.
While everyone else thought the average consumer was too stupid to use a PC, Bill Gates thought it otherwise and strove to make it an inviting world to compute in.
Cooporations began to realize, that people might want PCs, and not just the garage tech head science geek. MS doesn't make claim to this...why? Logic of convergent ideas.
Just as the internet becomes so integral to everyday computing, so MS decides it should be a part of an OS, not some buy separately app.
MS invents and creates plenty of things, they innovate just as any other. They are merely envied, and that envy is one ignorant green monster, and not the Hulk. :p I find it hard to believe a company started by a guy who programmed computers at 13, is unable to have ideas of it's own.
By your logic again, as a communist type spin, there should be only 1 of anything. One piece of software, 1 web page, one internet web log (blogs are not new but the term is), 1 ISP, etc etc.
God forbid we be stuck with some antiquated hardware and the notion that a 1 button mouse is all we need. See my point?
It is only MS that is viewed as a villain. Nobody else in history but MS, sad. Envious little people :D
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|1. MS didn't invent ...
- PCs
- the hardware of PCs
- Operation Systems
In fact MS-DOS was a blatant copy of CP/M.
2. No one argues that Bill Gates was a nerd who worked on cool things in his garage
3. Your text of wall doesn't get to the core of things at all.
Rewriting an Application of a competitor, making it require the Internet Explorer, adding ads and a little eye candy to it, is NOT innovating - it's Microsoft.
The basic idea is this. Someone has a good idea and creates a new market with it. After a while MS notices that and just writes a complete rip off. The rip off gets integrating into Windows somehow. Now there will be a almost guarantied market share for MS no matter how bad the product they made really is.
4. That's the thing, the evolution you seem to cling so much to doesn't work. The worse product successes because of the monopoly MS has on the consumer OS.
5 Its boring, yes boring. I don't want to repeat myself over and over again. I hope when MS skype clone comes out someone else will pick up my flag.
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|Isn't this what any good business does?
You could really look at any business and say they copied someone. Its part of business. It not only brings competition (for things that are priced) but also forces those in the competition to improve.
And guess who benefits? The consumer!
Since we're talking MS, where do you think gaming would be if they didn't enter the market? They certainly have pushed things to the next level there.
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|I prove my point in your eyes though...you only see MS as never inventing when it does. Only MS copies in your eyes and the other way around doesn't apply...when in fact it does.
Just go look and research ALL that MS has done. I won't try to prove things to you...just do it and see if what you say isn't so...is still so.
Again, MS pioneered personal computing for the masses...they invented that concept. Don't like it? Hey, I won't try to convince you, but it's so. lol
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|http://terraserver.microsoft.com/
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|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA
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|"Virtual Earth 3D only works in Internet Explorer."
i guess they still haven't learnt anything :(
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|Ummm, it's a Beta...
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|I think it looks really good on photo. But the range of maps is very limited, and for the time being Google Maps is still better.
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|http://www.gearthblog.co...05/microsoft_image.html
This is a comment from one of the developers of Google Earth, do you still think its better?
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|THATS SO TIGHT I LOVE IT
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|I'm curious to see how many lawsuits get filed against Microsoft by building owners with an ad they disagree with appearing above their property.
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|Although I use IE: "Virtual Earth 3D only works in Internet Explorer." Thats still gay.
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|I don't get it -- no New York City? What's up with that? They have Baltimore and San Jose, but not NYC. Seems odd, that's all...
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|Maybe because New York is so large. Of course, I think San Jose is pretty big too, but probably not as many buildings like Manhattan has. And then there's Queens. That place in itself would take all year to map out!
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|Maybe it because M$ know that the US government is going to perform another un-announced demolition and don't want to have to re-draw NY city. No demolition plans for Baltimore and San Jose just yet.
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