Earthware Blog

UPDATE: Earthware’s Vscapes product now offers 3d Building developments for our clients in Virtual Earth and Google Earth. For more details see our Vscapes virtual landscapes page for details and client stories. 

Microsoft have today released a Google Earth competitor called Virtual Earth 3d. Extending on their already existing Microsoft Virtual Earth, which competes with Google Maps, Virtual Earth 3d adds a 3d view with tilt functionality and support for 3d models.

The advantage over Google Earth is that it all works in the browser, and does not need a standalone application like Google Earth. However you do still need to download and install a plugin so its not seamless by any means.

Microsoft have also been busy adding various 3d models to worldwide major cities. The models are very simple and sometimes do not match the satellite photos correctly but do have low res photo texturing.

The control and experience does not feel quiet as smooth as Google Earth, but to be fair that will probably come as we use it more.

The new features are one part of the Version 4 Map control that Microsoft have released, that has also extending the development API as well. Details of the changes can be seen at http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/. These new features continue to demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to becoming the leading web mapping provider and they are doing a great job!
Take it for a spin at local.live.com.

As I mentioned in previous blogs, companies are now starting to realize the effectiveness of using video footage from Google Earth for there multimedia projects as the recent British Airways uk ad campaign show.

I recently found some great footage showing what is possible on Garry Grims blog, for example:

As you can see they are very effective and you can now see the BBC frequently using similar footage in their news reports. If you interest in using Google Earth footage in your projects just contact us and we can get you started.

Dubai is undergoing what could be called some ’serious’ development work in the last few years. They are building entire new islands in a variety of funky shapes for the mega rich to buy holiday homes on. A downside of this is that the geographical layout changes very quickly, too quickly is seems for any of the internet mapping tools to keep up.

I was disappointed when looking at Dubai for some client Google Earth work to see how out of date all the maps are. I expected them to be updated regularly just because of how amazing the Dubai developments are, but alas this is not the case. For example take a look at the Google Earth current coverage.

You can see the 2 new ‘palm island’ developments on the map, however since then they have built the ‘World’ and another palm. I’ve found a Google Earth overlay that shows the updated development, but the overlay is a bit rough. Here is a screenshot.

A few days late in blogging this, mostly because Ive been coming up with uses for the new features that we can offer our clients. Googles latest release of Google Earth 4 Beta offers some great new inovative features:

• Timelines – allowing points, images and 3d models to be shown with timestamps and viewed using a sliding timeline bar
• Support for web mapping service (WMS) – an existing standard for queries bitmap maps (see Ogle Earth for what is actually does)
• Support for HI-Defininiation (HDTV) video output (pro version only)

There are a few other updates but these are the main ones that are exciting to Google Earth developers, especially the timeline feature.There are allready a few examples of what the timeline feature could be used for, here is one showing a building changing over many years and another that shows a car journey and photos from the windscreen view over the duration of the journey.

The real question is what other applications the timeline feature it could be used for, here at Earthware we are looking at demos to show:

• Building projects in phases so you can move the timeline and show how the project will progress
• Cruises and tours so the user can see where the tour/ship will be at different times during the cruise/tour and see relevant photos and information to each location.
• Sporting events and races – showing progress over time
• Documenting adventures and journeys in Google Earth

The timeline control is a little complex at the moment and I hope they tweak it a little for the final version, but the possibilities for time and animation certainly make a interesting challenge.

The video update is also interesting especially since the recent publicity British Airways has recieved for its new TV advert showing Google Earth footage. It was amusing to see everyone blog how amazing it was, when the the video output feature has been available for months, its just British Airways were the first large company to actually use it in an advert. HI-Definition can only help it be used more often for media projects.

It is unfortunate, with the Google Earth team being so innovative recently, that the Google Maps team don’t seem to have really done anything special recently especially when compared to the recent new Virtual Earth developments.

Microsoft have launched the latest version of Virtual Earth on http://local.live.com. Along with a bit of a redesign they have added some really neat drawing features.

You can now easily draw areas and routes that could be used by businesses to show all kinds of things like catchment area, population statistics, house prices, race routes, delivery areas, bus routes, train routes, scientific data the list is endless. To see an example of the kind of collection anyone can make click here.

Virtual Earth is now really shaping up to become an extremely powerful business mapping solution with the existing easy to use pinpoints (a feature which google have recently also added) and the new drawing tools its now even easier to create powerful maps for your website.

In the US they have also added more ‘birds eye’ views for various cities, unfortunately no more currently for the UK .

The glove has definitely now been thrown to google maps, the features and development cycle for virtual Earth is now vastly superior to that of Google Maps, as is the satellite coverage. Of course the problem in comparing Virtual Earth to Google maps, Google Earth or Yahoo maps is that Virtual Earth is not free. As I’ve already discussed on this blog there is a not particularly clear charging structure for usage of Virtual Earth when you use more than 5,000 transactions per day.

The Digitally Distributed Environments blog posted an interesting article about creating 3d Panoramas using Google Earth. I’m sure you have seen 3d panoramas before, either of the insides of buildings, or of open areas / views. This technique however produces the same effect using Google Earth’s satellite imagery.(click the image below to see the 3d Panorama using QuickTime VR)

The panoramas are created by taking a series of screen shots from within Google Earth with the view rotated around a fixed point above the map and then adding a fake sky texture. This technique could easily be used to show 3d buildings in the view as well.

Of course there is one major problem, using this technique commercially is almost certainly against Google Earth’s terms of use (see this post in their faq section). How you would go about getting permission to use these, or the costs involved I have no idea. If anyone does (google?) please let us all know.

I found this Google Earth Network Link today on the Google Earth Forums:

Map Comparision Network Link

It allows you to navigate to a position in Google Earth and when you stop moving, creates a pushpin which has direct links to the same co-ordinates in Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and Yahoo maps.

I found it a very quick way to compare aerial map data, especially to see the date differences between the data for each provider. For example look at the business park below, there are obviously a good few months difference in date between the providers as half that buildings are missing on some.

 

 

 

Microsoft Virtual Earth

 

Google Maps

As you can see the Google Maps / Earth data is much more up to date, now if only they would get full UK coverage!

As a taster for the demos we are working on here at Earthware.co.uk I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of one we have just finished.

This network link lists all the UK cinemas and their show times in Google Earth and is updated daily.

UK Cinema Show Times

The idea of this demo shows clients how existing data can be powerfully used in Google Earth and other mapping technologies to give users a much richer experience. It is also a demo that shows how ad based affiliate revenue can be integrated into maps.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to add them to the comments for this blog entry.

I was having a bad monday until this cheered me up, it just shows how important accurate mapping is to ANY business.

[googlevideo]-7472534472179011429[/googlevideo]

UPDATE: You can now purchase birdseye imagery directly from us at Earthware, to find our more see our birds eye and aerial imagery page. 

Having recently played around with Microsoft Virtual Earth I’ve been amazed by the ‘Birds Eye Views’ some of which are now available for UK cities including St. Albans, Bristol, Brighton, Cambridge, Swindon and a few others. You can see them all by looking at this collection:

UK Birds Eye Views

There is also full UK coverage of reasonable detailed aerial maps, much better than Google Maps current UK coverage. For UK businesses looking for mapping solutions this is brilliant news and we are working with a few companies on projects using this now. Here is a great sample of the ‘Birds Eye View’:

The only downside is the commercial licensing Currently it’s still a bit vague but here is what the virtual earth site says:

Transaction Limitations. Microsoft reserves the right, from time to time, in its sole discretion, to impose a limit on the number of Transactions (as that term is defined below) that You may request from the API or to otherwise limit or suspend Your access to the API or the Service. Without limiting the foregoing, You may not request more than Five Thousand (5,000) Transactions from the API in a twenty four hour period. A “Transaction” means using any of the following Service functionalities (and subsets thereof), or any successor thereof or addition thereto, all as described in the Service software development kit located at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4932476 (“SDK”) including: i) Find Methods (Find, FindResult, FindResults,; ii) Route Methods: (Route,RouteItinerary, and RouteSegment); and, iv) rendering eight (8) map or photographic imagery tiles (256 x 256 pixels per tile).

So you can use it on a public facing, low traffic site up to 5,000 “transactions” per day, otherwise you need a MapPoint account (large price with high entry transaction volumes). Currently however there is no way to add your MapPoint key to the current maps API, so its all a bit premature.

If you want to have a go at coding your own maps I suggest you take a look at the SDK here.