Digital Earth Blog

When WorldWide Telescope came out earlier this year, it blew a lot of people away — including me.  It’s a phenomenal program!

However, it didn’t support the excellent SpaceNavigator device, making it much more difficult to use.  I thought it was a bug at first, but it was simply not a supported device.

Today 3Dconnexion announced support for the software, and it works wonderfully.  I’ve spent a good deal of time just browsing around this evening, because the SpaceNavigator makes it so easy.  If you already have a SpaceNavigator, so download the latest version of WWTS and have some fun!

Despite being far behind in features, MapQuest has been remarkably resilient in holding onto their market share.  Google Maps continues to catch up, but is still below half of the market share that MapQuest is holding.

However, MapQuest continues to try to catch back up.  Today they’ve released a new beta version of their site, and it’s certainly a step forward.  The biggest change is that they’ve put a map directly on the home page, rather than forcing you to search or get directions.  The map includes some useful layers (gas prices, traffic) and seems pretty solid.

Another nice change is the option of “copy and paste” address input.  Rather than having to put each element in a separate field (address, city, state, zip), you can drop them in a single box (just like you already could on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft).

Maybe we can chalk it up to being beta, but even the basic map usage still lags behind the others.  There are two basic functions that are missing:

1. I can’t use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
2. The zooms are hard breaks, rather than the smoother zoom used by Google and Microsoft.

As we’ve said before, it’s great to see them trying to catch back up.  Is it too little, too late?  Or will these kinds of steps be enough to hold onto their audience?  They promise many more upgrades in coming months, so we’ll see what happens.

Well, new to them at least.  Panoramio has brought out a new feature to allow you to “Look Around” some landmarks using a very simple, intiuitive interface.  As Google Earth Blog points out, this feels very similar to Microsoft’s Photosynth.  In addition, as Google System points out, it’s not nearly as cool.

I’m a bit disappointed that this doesn’t yet work in Google Earth.  I was picturing something much more similar to Photosynth, where you could interact in a 3D world.  Still, it’s a very nice start and works very well.  The transitions between photos are very smooth and really help illustrate how the photos are related to one another.

Some places to check out, as suggested by the Panoramio blog:

• St. Peter Square in Rome
• Alhambra from Albaicin
• Mount Rushmore
• Roofs of Lisbon
• Chicago’s Hancock Tower
• Stockholm from Katarinahissen
• The Red Square of Moscow
• Brandenburg gate in Berlin
• The Taj Mahal
• The Sydney Opera House

Update: A little more info is now up on the Google LatLong blog.

I’ve long felt that two things would need to happen to get to the next level in 3D imagery — trees and highway overpasses.

Since one of the neat features in Google Earth is the ability to fly a route, having proper overpasses would make things look much better.  The latest version of Virtual Earth has some cities modeled in “version 2.0″, which include a number of advances.  To the right is a bridge over a river.  While the bottom is still solid (you can’t see the river under the bridge) and the edges are rough, it’s really coming along nicely.  The tighter mesh of elevation data is getting us closer to where I’d like to see it.  I would think we’ll see some real progress in this area within the next year or so.

The bigger problem is the lack of trees.  Amazingly, Microsoft has begun to fix that already, too!  I really felt that was still well off in the future, but I’m glad I was wrong.  It only works in their “version 2.0″ cities (Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix), but it’s really neat.  As Google Earth Blog had speculated, the trees are generated automatically by Microsoft.  Hand-placing thousands of trees would be an impossible task to keep up with.

In addition, the trees don’t affect load time very much.  They only have to load a given tree type once, then tweak the height and diameter for each placement of it.  As such, I’ve found the trees load very quickly — usually before most of the buildings.

I’m a bit concerned about performance, though.  The tree models look excellent, and with thousands of them scattered around a city, I have to think that it’ll make things move a little slower.  I’m currently out of town on an old laptop, so everything is slow right now.  When I get home to my primary PC I’ll really start putting it through it’s paces.

Microsoft says that the updated data will roll out to the current set of 250 3D cities “soon” and I’m really looking forward to it.

Microsoft has just released “ClearFlow” traffic data on Live Maps, but it’s far more interesting than you might think.  While it shows the colored traffic speeds in a similar manner as Yahoo, Google and Mapquest, it also goes much deeper.

From Search Engine Land:

In addition to real-time traffic data, the service offers traffic predictions across highways and improved information on secondary routes and surface streets. Horvitz said that this predictive modeling has proven to be very accurate in Microsoft’s ongoing development and refinement of the program. Based on artificial intelligence, as well as dynamic traffic monitoring, ClearFlow appears to be quite a bit more sophisticated that competing systems.

This could easily become the best traffic data on your PC.  Of course, therein lies the problem — it’s chained to my PC.  It’s very useful to get traffic data when I’m at my desk, but it’s brilliant to be able to get it while I’m on the road.

Here’s what needs happen next:

• Microsoft releases a version of Live Maps Mobile, with similar features to Google Maps Mobile.
• One of them steps up and includes turn-by-turn GPS into their mobile software.  GMM is so close to being the killer mobile app.  I can get turn-by-turn directions.  It can see/follow my GPS.  It just won’t tell me how far until my next turn!  I have very high hopes for the next version of GMM, but it’s been very quiet on that front lately.  A push from Microsoft would be a great thing for us consumers.

Robert Scoble has admitted that a demo of Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope a few weeks ago made him cry.

A snippet:

You drag around the sky. There’s Mars. There’s the big dipper. There’s Beetlejuice. Etc. It’s just like the star party you probably attended in college.

But it has one difference between any telescope you’ve ever looked at.

You can zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

We picked a point of light inside the big dipper. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Holy shit, it’s two galaxies colliding. It looked like a star. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

Now the magic happened.

Curtis Wong said: “let’s switch to a different telescope and see what these two galaxies colliding are spitting out.”

He clicked a button and we saw a completely different view of the same colliding galaxies. This time we weren’t looking at visible light, but at something else. I think it might have been infrared, or maybe a look at radiation being kicked out. He had about 10 of the world’s telescopes to look at. I forget all the names, but that detail is in the video coming on Monday.

Check out the full post for more information. He says a video is coming on Monday, so we’ll be sure to post that when we see it.

According to TechCrunch, Microsoft is set to unveil a product called “Worldwide Telescope” on February 27. This product will be used through a Windows-only downloadable application.

It sounds a whole lot like the “Sky Mode” in Google Earth. From the article:

Users will be able to pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow. Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope as well as ten or so earth bound telescopes around the world for data. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views, such as infrared and non-visible light.

They say it will be much better than Google Sky for two reasons:

• More data, which sounds reasonable. I don’t have the numbers to say for sure if that’s accurate or not, but it certainly sounds like this will launch with a TON of data.
• A better user interface, which is “seamless as you move around the sky and zoom in and out”.

I don’t know about you, but Sky mode in Google Earth is pretty seamless to me, especially with the SpaceNavigator. I sure hope Microsoft includes support for it when they release this new product.

Microsoft has just announced that they have added Caligari, makers of the 3D modeling software trueSpace, to their to their Virtual Earth team.

Plans for implementing Caligari into Virtual Earth have not been revealed, but it certainly has a lot of potential.  One item that I’ve seen mentioned a few times already is the possiblity of a “Second Life” type of feature, or perhaps just another way to put high-quality 3D into the globe.  In any case, it should only mean more good stuff for us to enjoy!

Microsoft has just announced that two big customers have migrated over to Virtual Earth.   From their site:

• Yellowbook, The largest independent yellow pages publisher, has migrated their application from Mapquest to Virtual Earth in order to take advantage of VE’s advanced rooftop geocoding and maps.
• Windermere released Property Point 3 and in so doing migrated from a mapping solution built on ESRI and Google mapping to the V6 Virtual Earth platform.

That’s a couple of big-time clients.  I wonder how the numbers stack up in terms of Google Maps vs. Virtual Earth for these kinds of companies?

Microsoft just doesn’t play around.  They’re back with another absolutely massive update, this one totaling around 27TB!  I love the amount of 3D they continue to push out.  It’s slightly lower quality than Google Earth, but the sheer volume of it more than compensates.

Much of the new imagery is for cities that have new 3D data.  This makes sense.  3D buildings tend to look way out of place when they’re on top of low-res imagery.

The good stuff:

New 3D Cities

• Redding, CA
• Colorado Springs, CO
• Fort Collins, CO
• Des Moines, IA
• Sioux City, IA
• Waterloo, IA
• Boise City, ID
• Decatur, IL
• Ann Arbor, MI
• Dearborn, MI
• Flint, MI
• Kalamazoo, MI
• Lansing, MI
• Lincoln, NE
• Omaha, NE
• Reno, NV
• Ogden, UT
• Bellingham, WA
• Kenosha-Racine, WI

Ortho Aerial Imagery

• Ann Arbor, MI
• Bellingham, WA
• Boise City, ID
• Colorado Springs, CO
• Decatur, IL
• Des Moines, IA
• Flint, MI
• Fort Collins, CO
• Kalamazoo, MI
• Kenosha-Racine, WI
• Lansing, MI
• Lincoln, NE
• Omaha, NE
• Redding, CA
• Reno, NV
• Sioux City, IA
• Waterloo, IA

Also, Japan now has level 19 tiles — it previously only went to 18.

Oblique Aerial Imaery

• USA
  • Dekalb, AL
  • Fayette, AL
  • Lamar, AL
  • Madison, AL
  • Marion, AL
  • Marshall, AL
  • Morgan, AL
  • Walker, AL
  • Winston, AL
  • Barrow, GA
  • Gwinnett, GA
  • Newton, GA
  • Ada, ID
  • Madison, IL
  • Delaware, IN
  • Lake, IN
  • Sedgwich, KS
  • Anoka, MN
  • St Louis, MN
  • Amite, MS
  • Covington, MS
  • Itawamba, MS
  • Jones, MS
  • Lee, MS
  • Marshall, MS
  • Newton, MS
  • Prentiss, MS
  • Rankin, MS
  • Wayne, MS
  • Cabarrus, NC
  • Gaston, NC
  • Lake, OH
  • Trumbull, OH
  • Bucks, PA
  • Delaware, PA
  • Luzerne, PA
  • Kanawha, WV
  • Alachua, FL
  • Pinellas, FL
  • Volusia, FL
  • Brazoria, TX
  • Hood, TX
  • Jasper, TX
  • Jefferson, TX
  • Montgomery, TX
  • Webb, TX
  • Wise, TX
• Europe
  • Genk, Belgium
  • Bad Salzuflen, Germany
  • Geissen, Germany
  • Greifswald, Germany
  • Neubrandenburg, Germany
  • Neunkirchen, Germany
  • Odense, Denmark
  • Algeciras, Spain
  • Aviles, Spain
  • Cadiz, Spain
  • Cartagena, Spain
  • Granollers, Spain
  • Irun, Spain
  • Oviedo, Spain
  • Sagunto, Spain
  • Tarragona, Spain
  • Jyvaskyla, Finland
  • Delft, Netherlands
  • Terneuzen, Netherlands
  • Olbia, Italy
  • Biella, Italy
  • Boras, Sweden
  • Eskilstuna, Sweden
  • Falun, Sweden
  • Gavle, Sweden
  • Jonkoping, Sweden
  • Kalmar, Sweden
  • Karlstad, Sweden
  • Vasteras, Sweden
  • Vaxjo, Sweden

Satellite Imagery

• Ibadan, Nigeria
• Karachi, Pakistan
• Lahore, Pakistan
• Seville, Spain
• Tehran, Iran
• Dubai, UAE
• Erode, India
• Kannur (Cannanore), India
• Lakshadweep, India
• Chengdu, China
• Kenming, China
• Changsha, China
• Chongqing, China
• Qingdao, China
• Shanghai, China
• Salvador, Brazil
• SaoPaulo, Brazil
• Medellin, Colombia
• Winnipeg, Canada

Insanely awesome.