Image: Virtual Earth Birds Eye View function
I’m a big fan of Google Earth. It’s user-friendly, has great terrain, roads, and 3-D building features, etc. However, the Bird Eye view function for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth has me feeling pretty excited.
Image: Google Earth 3-D buildings feature
It allows the user to view actual buildings, in 2-D, from different angles. Google Earth does not have this capability. Microsoft’s Virtual Earth allows the user to zoom in unnecessarily close and has much more updated and better image quality than Google Earth. However, the zooming out capability is limited and one is left staring at a few buildings at a time instead of a full panorama. Google is releasing version 4 which is likely to have some eye-popping features.
In other news, Google is implementing a new feature to Google Maps: StreetView. Miami will be included in Street View in the coming months. This feature will enable the user to have a first-person street view of the city of their choice. Microsoft has already moved in the same direction with their own (limited release) version of the same feature.
Just checked after reading this post, StreetView is already enabled for Miami!!
WAY TOO COOL. Not only can you get directions, but know what the building looks like also?
Insane. Honestly.
Woah! This must have happened today. Ridiculous. The zoom-in is pretty damn good and the visuals pretty crisp.