Microsoft Virtual Earth adds Birds-Eye View to 3D Globe

Microsoft Virtual Earth Adds Birds-Eye View to 3D Globe

October 15th, 2007 · 21 Comments · Microsoft, Virtual Earth

We all somewhat guess this would be coming around and tonight Microsoft releases Birds-eye View for their 3D Globe. They’ve taken those great Birds-eye View images from the 2D maps and using Photosynth they stiched them all together to create a “3D World”. Now of course this isn’t a true 3D, but if you’ve ever tried out Photosynth, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The Virtual Earth Blog spells it out quite nicely.

For background, its important to understand the challenges of visualizing our Birds eye imagery in a seamless mosaic the way we are all used to looking at satellite imagery that looks straight down at earth. Since all of the images are shot from the same point of view, it’s relatively easy to stitch them together in a convincing tapestry. There’s still challenges like doing good color balancing across images and rectifying so that buildings in tall cities don’t appear to butt heads, but these are pretty well understood problems. Birds eye images are a different story. because of the way they are captured, there is no easy way to stitch them at their edges without introducing nasty distortions. The result is that Birds eye imagery is viewed as discrete ’scenes’ instead of 1 giant tapestry. when you navigate to the edge of the current scene, the most appropriate next scene is dynamically determined, then displayed. Since Birds eye imagery is captured from 4 angles, we have North, South, East and west views of each point on earth adding another dimension of complexity to navigation.

In 3D, the same challenges remain, but are easier to address with client side managed code. the result is a user interface that borrows concepts from MSR’s Photosysnth to allow you to navigate more fluidly and naturally than what is possible with a javascript based client.

If you ever read my blog, you know how much I love the Birds-eye View images and now combining them with the 3D globe really gives you the ability to see areas that you’d miss with a top down or even a street level view. I’m interested to see how one can now use these images with applications built on the 3D globe. The limitations of the Birds-eye images might not allow much, but it still would be interesting to see on a macro level.

The street level images are nice from a navigating sense, but I always feel like I’m in a canyon. These Birds-eye view images are much more open and having them available in 2D or 3D really pushes Virtual Earth ahead of Google Maps in my book (now how about making the darn think work in Safari?). One thing that jumped out at me was how good Microsoft’s building models look. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between the Birds-eye and the 3D model. For those who can’t install the 3D add on, take a look at the video below.

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21 responses so far ↓

1 yodel // Oct 15, 2007 at 9:15 pm

Thanks for the props on the buildings, we try!
2 Ben Slater // Oct 16, 2007 at 6:50 am

Very nice, I like how they handle the interface with the birds eye view in the globe. Lots of fun to pan around with that.

My only complaint is that KML polygons appear underneath the birds eye photos in the 3D globe, but I guess that’s because they’re rasterized.
3 Cellulose // Oct 16, 2007 at 8:22 am

These Birds-eye view images are cool.
Tnx
4 Brian Flood // Oct 16, 2007 at 8:54 am

this is really amazing, just spent 20 minutes panning around NJ. a much better UI for the birds-eye images.

well done MS

cheers
brian
5 JW // Oct 16, 2007 at 10:08 am

You didn’t even mention the feature that kicks even more butt….you can add in your own 3D models now!
6 Kevin // Oct 16, 2007 at 11:12 am

JW - where did you see it mentioned you can add your own 3D models now?
7 JW // Oct 16, 2007 at 11:29 am

in 3D view, right click on the map….it says “add 3D model” Then you can download the software to make your own model….which is FAR more intuitive that Google SkrunchUp.
8 steve lombardi // Oct 16, 2007 at 12:00 pm

@Ben - We have an bug open to fix the issue of polys being drawn under the raster layer. it should definitely work the way you are hoping.

@Kevin - I hope to add a lot more info on the 3D modeling tools on the VE blog this week. in the Meanwhile EarthWare blog has done a pretty nice job of showing this feature off:

http://www.earthware.co.uk/blog/?p=24
9 Kevin // Oct 16, 2007 at 12:18 pm

Im seriously starting to drink the MS kool-aid for the VE and Live API functionality. The State of Michigan is beginning to leverage VE and its ESRI infrastructure together with a couple of projects in the pipeline utilizing open source resources to bring the two software offerings together. Actually along this same line of thought, I will be providing a blog post on the VE for gov blog in the coming weeks on this initiative and its composition to assist other agencies in leverage the VE platform for internet mapping.

Thanks for the link and thanks to the VE and Live teams for continuing to push the envelope of internet mapping.

kudos -

Kevin Stong
Center for Geographic Information
Dept. of Information Technology
State of Michigan
10 BD // Oct 16, 2007 at 12:47 pm

@Steve - Great work….this is awesome stuff. Are there any plans to import existing 3D data (i.e. 3D shapefiles or CAD data) directly in to the 3D modeling tools? Similar to the SketchUp import/export ArcGIS functionality.
11 madiha // Oct 17, 2007 at 3:23 am

i like this web site, here every one can discuss matters.
i am stuck in conversion from kml to shp. i have tried different applications. they convert but the shp file is not geo referenced. i dont know what i should do, i am stuck. if any one can help please tell me which converter i should use and please giev me the web address of that converter
12 Claude // Oct 17, 2007 at 8:22 am

Is there a list available of cities that feature the photo-synth’d 3D models?
thanks,
Claude
13 KJ // Oct 17, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Anyone else have this problem? winxp pro, sp2, IE7 : VE + 3d was working just fine until I installed this new version, now it crashes in IE with system.invalidCastException. I have uninstalled and reinstalled, and rebooted and the like, but no luck it just does not work for me now.
14 steve lombardi // Oct 17, 2007 at 2:29 pm

@KJ - We have had a couple of similar bug reports. If you can email me a debug log, we should be able to assist. to turn on logging on XP, edit the config file at:

c:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual Earth 3D
and add this section:

True

the debug logs will then be written here:
C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual Earth 3D

you can email them to me at stevelom a microsoft.com

thanks. we’ll by you a beer
15 tim // Oct 18, 2007 at 3:28 am

New beta doesn’t crash but with 3D Birdseye settings the app seems to fight the frame buffer hard creating ~10 fps flashing until the user manually resizes window. But that is just a temporary fix until you fly around another few seconds, resize window again. On a Nvidia quadro FX Go1000 128MB, DX v9, XP pro SP2. Use a LOT of other 3D viewers and authoring platforms on this rig with nothing like that happening.

Nice to see the UW/MSR Photosynth methods brought to commercial product so quickly. Still wish adjacent “photosynth” images were loaded into buffer and previewed using a semi-transparant setting to ease transition between images while still allowing user to see 3D model behind.
16 JW // Oct 18, 2007 at 5:01 am

I still say it is your video card drivers though because I am using it with a super crummy ATI card and I don’t have the problems you are reporting.
17 J Wallis // Oct 18, 2007 at 7:01 am

why does the above post look like spam?
18 Tim Maddle // Oct 19, 2007 at 5:58 pm

What pushed VE above Google Maps for me was the ease with VE handled fairly large number of markers or polygons that choked Google Earth. I can’t say enough positive things about VE. The birds eye view is nice, but the ability to see 2D aerials quickly and reliably is plenty for me. I’m finding VE + MapServer (Mapscript) + Shapefiles is a formidable combination. I plan to see how well overlaying a WMS service from GeoServer works in the next week or two. Of course, James still owes us a report on his experiences with MapDotNet Server…
19 James Fee // Oct 19, 2007 at 6:33 pm

Damn, I still do owe that post.

Its half finished. Maybe this weekend I’ll finish writing it.
20 Tim Maddle // Oct 20, 2007 at 5:05 am

No rush, James, but I’m interested in a couple of things:

1. You mentioned that you turned to MapDotNet Server because you weren’t entirely happy with the results of customizing ESRI’s Web ADF client. What were your frustrations? I ask from the perspective of someone who is just getting started with the Web ADF. I wish I could commit 100% to VE, but my organization’s commitment to ESRI means I have to at least make an effort at using the WEB ADF. I setup a very basic initial project and it worked pretty well, but it seemed like the ADF was going to be a bear to customize to my specific needs, and

2. How does MapDotNet Server perform using the SDE as a backend?
21 Jennifer // Jun 6, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Hopefully someone is still monitoring this blog and will read this! Anyway, does anyone know of a site that provides a birds’ eye view of properties by address, but that also allow you to COPY the photo for free?

Thanks for your help.