Bing Maps Adds 41TB of Aerial and Birds Eye Photography – Awesome
Thursday, August 13th, 2009The baddest search engine on the internet – Bing, just got badder. Formerly known as Virtual Earth, Bing Maps offers an awesome Birds Eye View feature which allows you to see some areas of the planet from the air, but under an angle, which offers pretty clear perspective of said area. This unsurpassed feature just got better on August 4, 2009 after folks from Microsoft Corporation added 41TB worth of aerial and birds eye photography to Bing Maps. That means there will be many more places covered at higher resolution and many more offered from birds eye perspective.
Bing Maps has a really cool demo site located at http://bingmapsupdates.cloudapp.net/ which has a really cool slideshow that will take you on a virtual tour throughout the planet. It’s a fascinating ride and I recommend everyone checking that link out. It also shows new places that Bing Maps added to their depository and has icons to indicate whether the area has aerial view or whether it also has birds eye view. Check it out, it’s really cool. Make sure you roll your mouse over Map Options and click Play Slideshow. They just sit back and indulge in your personal “around the world in a few minutes” tour.
I have been watching is whole morning and can’t seem to get enough of it. The slideshow obviously focuses primarily on newly covered areas of Bing Maps (to show what those 41TB of data were collected from) but you will see many interesting places of the world. According to Bing Community bulletin post, new satellite imagery covers extra 189,000 square kilometers of the planet and includes more than 12,000 square kilometers of new Bird’s Eye Photography. During my first few minutes of enjoying the virtual tour I have been to Taiwan, Henderson Island, Luanda, Angola, Diego Garcia and Cardamum Amihi, Maldives, Leuven, Belgium, Goteborg and Malmo, Sweden, Denali, Alaska, Huahine and Moorea, French Polynesia, Kanggye and Gumi, South Korea, Tolyatti, Russia, Wellsford, New Zealand, Pasuruan and Chatrapur, India, Pavia and Crotone, Italy, Avila, Spain, Sydney and Fredericton, Canada, San Blas, Mexico, Brazzaville, Congo, Dakar, Senegal, Bourail, New Caledonia, Munich and Stuttgart, Germany, Tubukiniberu and Ijaki, Kiribati, Xinxiang, China, Leiden and Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Graz, Austria, Upolu Samoa, Jyvaskyla, Finland, etc etc. Sweet ride. Bing Maps rules.