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'Live Search Maps' (previously ''Windows Live Maps'' and ''Windows Live Local''), is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Windows Live online applications services suite and powered by Microsoft's "Virtual Earth".

Contents

Features

Street Maps

Satellite Images

Bird's eye view

3D Maps

Other features

History and Updates

Compatibility

Browsers

3D Feature

See also

References

External links

Features

Street Maps

Detailed street maps are available for nearly all of the cities in the world. Metro stations, stadiums, hospitals, and other facilities also appear on the maps. Users can also see the directions of roads and streets. Search is available, so that users can search for any location/street, a business or category, or even search for people.
For some countries, like South Africa, and South Korea, Live Search Maps has data on highways and some arterial roads, but lacks local streets or alleys. There is also detailed map data available for several global cities in developing countries like Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Mexico City. However, for such cities, the detail of the map decreases significantly as one moves outward from the city center.

Satellite Images

Satellite images are available too, users can zoom in until they see cars and, in some cities, people can be seen walking in the street (appearing as tiny black dots). Some of the images are very high-quality, others are not, depending on the city.
For images where users can both view satellite images with map details, users can enable the "Hybrid" option.
List of countries and cities that have detailed satellite images:

★ United States

★ Canada (with the exception of the rural northeastern provinces)

★ United Kingdom, Germany, Italy

★ Australia

★ New Zealand

★ Japan

★ India

Bird's eye view

In over 100 cities in the United States^[1] and in over 80 European locations,^[2] a bird's-eye view offers aerial photos from four points of view. These Pictometry images are much more detailed than the aerial views from directly above buildings. Signs on tops of buildings, advertisements, pedestrians, and other objects are clearly visible in many bird's eye views.

3D Maps

Instead of viewing flat satellite maps, users can enable the "3D Maps" feature and see buildings in 3D, fly around, rotate and tilt. To add realistic effect, all of the 3D buildings are textured using images taken from different angles of every single building.
To view the 3D maps, users have first to install a plugin, then enable the "3D" option on "Virtual Earth". Rotating and tilting options can be used only in the 3D maps. At the CES 2007 keynote speech by Microsoft, it was announced that it is possible to navigate the 3D environment using an Xbox 360 or other game controller in Windows Vista or Windows XP. The 3D plugin released in April 2007 can be controlled with 3Dconnexion's ''SpaceNavigator'' as well.
Currently, most of the large cities of the United States, and a few cities in Canada and in the United Kingdom can be fully viewed in 3D. As for cities that cannot be fully viewed in 3D, users can still view only a few buildings there in 3D that are usually sights and attractions within these cities (such as the Colosseum in Rome).
The following is a list of cities that have most areas rendered in 3D:^[3]
'United States'
Redmond, Beaverton, Portland, Yonkers, Cheektowaga, Niagara, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Buffalo, New York City, Austin, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Joliet (Illinois), Naperville, Cape Coral, Tampa, Savannah, Hollywood (Florida), Oceanside (Florida), and Miami.
'Canada'
Calgary, Levis-St. Romuald, Niagara, Ottawa, Aurora
'United Kingdom'
Brighton, Northampton, Swindon
'Other locations'
La Jolla, La Mesa, Miramar

Other features

★ Terrain details are also available in 3D mode.

★ Finding, viewing, and printing driving directions

★ Traffic viewing (in several major cities)

★ User points of interest that can be stored and shared

★ Drawing on maps

★ A location finder that can locate the user's location

★ Integrated route calculation

★ Street-level photos (from all directions) only in Seattle, WA (city center) and San Francisco, CA (city center). Users can view these photos by driving a race or sports car, or by having a walk

History and Updates

Live Search Maps is an attempt to capitalize on the success of Google Earth, Google Maps, NASA World Wind, and other online map services and virtual globes, and is somewhat based on existing Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft MapPoint, and TerraServer. Upon its release in December 2005, Windows Live Local became the public face of the Virtual Earth platform. On November 6, 2006, Microsoft added the ability to view the maps in 3D using a .NET managed control and managed interfaces to Direct3D. Microsoft has recently referred to this product officially as "'Live Search Maps'", integrating it as part of its Live Search services.

★ v1 (Beagle) (July 2005)

★ v2 (Calypso) (December 2005) - "Bird's-eye imagery" released.

★ v2.5 (February 2006)

★ v3 (Discovery) (May 2006) - Real time traffic, collections, new API.

★ v4 (Endeavour) (September 2006) - People search, drawing on maps, new imagery.

★ v5 (Spaceland) (November 2006) - 3D viewer, building models in 15 cities.

★ Data update (December 2006) - New 3D models and high-resolution imagery for 6 new areas.

★ Data update (January 2007) - Over 100 European cities with bird's-eye coverage added.

★ Data update (29 March 2007) - 3.8TB of bird's-eye imagery, orthophotos and 3D models of 5 British cities.

★ v5.5 (Falcon) (3 April 2007) VE 3D plugin for Firefox, GeoRSS support, area calculations.

Compatibility

Live Search Maps has been tested on:
(for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X)

★ Internet Explorer: 5, 6 and 7

★ Mozilla Firefox: 1.5.x and 2.0
and unofficially tested on:

★ Camino

★ Konqueror

★ Netscape
The website does not support:

★ Mozilla Firefox 3.0a

★ Opera: works after cloaking as Internet Explorer or Firefox; with some minor layout and mouse control issues.

★ Safari

★ SeaMonkey

Browsers

★ Users of browsers that are not considered compatible, as well as users of versions of compatible browsers that are not supported, will be directed away from viewing the map without an error message, making it appear that links to maps are broken.

★ Because the service appears to decide whether or not a browser is supported based solely on the user agent it sends to the server, this issue can be detected (and potentially worked around) by user agent spoofing, falsely informing Microsoft's servers that the user is using a supported browser.

3D Feature

★ 3D viewer plug-in requires Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista, with Internet Explorer 6/7 or Firefox 1.5/2.0.

See also

★ Google Earth

★ Google Maps

★ Mobile GMaps

★ Yahoo Maps

★ NASA World Wind

★ Pictometry

★ Geoweb

★ Microsoft MapPoint

★ TerraServer-USA

References

1. List of bird's eye view cities in the US
2. List of bird's eye view sites in Europe
3. [1]

External links

★ Live Search Maps

★ Official Virtual Earth Blog - All latest news of Live Search Maps.

★ Heptazane's Blog - Manipulating Virtual Earth 3D

★ Virtual Earth For Government

★ Virtual Earth: MSN's answer to Google Maps

★ Virtual Earth News and Articles

★ Via Virtual Earth - Resource for Live Local developers

★ MSDN MapPoint Center - Official developer center for VE and MWS coders

★ Flash Earth - Compares satellite images from Virtual Earth with other mapping websites such as Google Maps, and Yahoo Maps

★ Virtual Earth plugin - VE imagery in NASA World Wind

★ Bird's Eye Tourist - Links to "bird's-eye" images

★ Book from O'Reilly that covers Virtual Earth programming