New Release of Microsoft Virtual Earth Brings Dense Cities and Improved Modeling

Microsoft has released a new version of Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D. There's a host of improvements, including the ability to export waypoints to GPS systems or send a collection of them to Google Earth. In a move that's more immediately impressive, in the new edition "cities are much more densely modeled, feature higher resolution textures, and include rendered trees," explains the Virtual Earth team blog. "Cities now have thousands more buildings than before especially noticeable as you move from a city core out to its suburbs. It all adds up to make Virtual Earth much less virtual and takes us a large step closer to delivering a truly impressive mirror world experience."

Looking back to  Chief Research and Strategy Officer for Microsoft Craig Mundie's discussion of mirror worlds versus virtual worlds earlier this week, it's easy to see where the interest is bearing out. The improved look is only visible in Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix--Phoenix?--right now, but any new cities should get the same treatment, with plans to bring over 250 online before the end of the year, starting with 20 major metropolitan areas in the US and Europe.

The VE3D blog, which also features a bevy of before-and-after comparisons gives a few more details: "A new engineering process allows for 100% automated modeling of structures and trees. In the case of these first 4 enhanced cities, previously existing structures were reused and resurfaced with enhanced texturing. And where the former modeling technique was theoretically limited to buildings of at least 3-4 stories in height, the new process also allows for the detection and modeling of smaller buildings resulting in much denser city models: roughly 10x or 1000% more! To quantify this, the average city model in Virtual Earth was formerly made up of between 4K to 8K structures compared to a range now of between 60K to roughly 130K structures. Phoenix, specifically, has 130K buildings and Denver, with a previous count of 5000 models, will be equally as dense once reprocessed with different parameters. This doesn't even include trees. The new Denver city model has on the order of 300K trees!"

Because the trees are loaded by type from a library instead of individually, they shouldn't cause significant additional load time either, making for a fast, lush environment.

Modeling

"Version 2" also improves the ability to add 3D models to Virtual Earth. A partnership with Dassault Systèmes to create 3Dvia brought a "technology preview" of 3D modeling in Virtual Earth back in October. With the goal of creating a rival to Google's 3D Warehouse, the two companies wanted to make it simple for users to add to a mirror world. Something the new release brings to the forefront.

"Not only has the interactive 3D environment been greatly enhanced for this release, but our modeler for creating your own buildings and structures in the virtual world is improved," explained the Virtual Earth Team. "To try it out, switch into 3D view, right click where you would like to add a building and choose 'Add 3D model'. the 3DVIA editor will launch and you are on your way to adding a building to Virtual Earth. Improvements include lighting for contributed models, creation of preview thumbnails when you save a model, and much faster publishing when using high resolution textures [provided with minimal download by Allegorithmic]."

There are plenty of other options included in the update, but, unfortunately, they appear to be currently unavailable to UK users, who are redirected automatically to Multimap,  which Microsoft acquired in December. No fear, though, a commenter explains that users across the pond can g o directly to Live Maps via:  http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us.

[via Virtual Earth Team blog and VE3D]

Comments

[Flyer]

Okay...okay..now THIS is cool!

[Flyer]

Okay...okay..now THIS is cool!

[Rodd Halstead]

Check out the trees the Virtual Earth. The level of detail (down to individual leaves) is amazing.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roddh/2404799837/in/set-72157602457155082/