Earthware Blog

In order to help with the launch of our new interactive property mapping product, we thought it would be a good idea to take a look at what the mapping looks like for a number of the top Estate agency chains and property portals.

Our findings are hardly scientifically robust, and we thought hard about whether to publish these, but given we had done the hard work, we thought it might be interesting.  What we did was take a look at every website (in early March 2008) and look at their maps to find out:

• Do they use mapping at all ?
• Do they have a map that has multiple properties on it (as opposed to a map for just a single property at a time) ?
• What underlying mapping technology each website used (API) ?

and for property portals, we also:

• Examined what data was included in the mapping
• Rated the quality of the mapping (from our point of view)

The Background

I guess we ought to make a few things clear before diving into the analysis.  Firstly, we conducted this research over a week in early March – it is therefore already potentially out of date and any conclusions should be considered with that in mind.  Secondly, any rating or judgement is purely subjective on our point and therefore open to both scrutiny and challenge – we are definitely not aiming to upset our potential customers!

The top 50 Estate Agents were based on a list published by Estate Agency News and the top 20 portals based on a list published by Estate Agency Times in January and February 2008 respective.  We acknowledge the copyright and have offered links in this article to the original articles.

The Analysis

For the full analysis , including tables, ratings etc. please refer to a detailed pdf containing all the analysis.  The commentary below is a summary                   analysis and findings.

Top 20 Portals

Please see the table in the attached pdf for details on each portal.

Observations

We would draw the following observations based on our research:

1. Google Maps leads the way
   Google Maps currently leads the way with nearly 50% of the portals (10 out of the 22) in this list.
2. The UK is seemingly behind in the move to Virtual Earth
   Despite the significant move in the US Real Estate companies across to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth product (mainly due to the Bird’s Eye imagery), the UK portals are lagging behind with only two of the 22 in this list.
3. Mapping still has a long way to go
   Despite technology being core to portal propositions, only 8 of the 22 have a multiple property map.  This would indicate that there is plenty of room for portals to maximise the value they can extract through interactive mapping and improve the experience of their users.

Top 50 Estate Agents

Please see the table in the attached pdf for our view on interactive mapping in the top 50 Estate Agents.

Observations

We would draw the following observations based on our research:

1. Google Maps leads the way
   In a similar manner to the top 20 portals, Google Maps currently leads the way with nearly 50% of the top Estate Agency sites (24 out of the 50).
2. Multimap still has a strong hold
   Unlike the portal list, the UK based Multimap retains a strong presence in the UK Estate Agency market.  Since the buy out by Microsoft, Multimap’s API has been further strengthened by the inclusion of Bird’s Eye imagery from the Virtual Earth API.
3. Mapping still has a long way to go
   In a similar trend to the top portals, only 12 of the 50 have a multiple property map (less than 25%!).  This would indicate that there is plenty of room for Agents to maximise the value they can extract through the use of interactive mapping in their websites.  It certainly might be an area where Agents can positively differentiate their web offerings in the minds of their customers.

Summary

We hope that the time we have taken to look at the interactive mapping for leading websites in the UK residential property market will be of interest.  Should you have any questions about how we conducted the analysis, or would like to chat through any of our conclusions, please contact Neil Osmond at Earthware (neil@earthware.co.uk or 0845 642 9880).

Yes you heard it folks the sun actually rises!  The Guys at Google have added a sun button and when activated you can see a sun in the sky that cast light on the land and even 3D models. A slider appears at the top of the screen that can be positioned anywhere along its 24hour timeline moving the sun to the appropriate position in the sky.

To the right of the slider is a play button which will play through a day at a default or user designated speed. the night sky even plays with stars once the sun has retreated round the other side of the globe.

I have to say it look great and is a very cool new feature although it does unfortunately not create shadows around 3D structures or between mountains. Even Having said this the overall effect is still very good and adds a lot of depth and realism to the environment.

Clouds and Weather

Other notable features are clouds and up to date weather information which not only beautify the globe but also give relevant and highly useful information to the user about what the weather is like, not only where they are but where they want to go as well. I can see this being very handy for the next ski seasons snow report!

 

Wow isn’t that pretty!

Here the weather report and forecast over our offices for the next few day. doesn’t look nice at all :@(

This project involved the creation of a proposed building the Eos Generali in the heart of the Paris business district for a Microsoft presentation also in Paris.

The video that appears above was created by the lads at 3DVia to show off the tools at their disposal and also the look of the environment in and around this new business development. Earthware worked on 9 models in total each of which can be seen in this video.

Each model was created in Shape and then imported to a collection in Virtual Earth. If you would like to see the results and browse around the 3D models for yourself then please click here.

This was a real coupe for Earthware and it was also a pleasure working with Marc at 3DVia over in the states. We predict big things for the 3DVia-Virtual Earth partnership and are eagerly awaiting the next release of their Shape modelling tool.

If you have any comments then please let us know.

Cheers

Chris

Multi Media Developer

Here at Earthware we have been using Shape for a while now in our interactive mapping and V-scapes products but we have yet to see any updates in the software until now. There have been several new features and a new tool added to shape of which I  will give brief overview of below

Texturing was one area that I felt needed improvement in the original version and I had the opportunity to voice my concerns to the team at 3Dvia when I was collaborating with them on the Virtual Earth Eos Generali project.

The principal improvement that has been added is a non uniform scale tool similar in function to the toolset in Google Sketchup. The texture manipulation tool now allows the user to stretch a texture vertically and horizontally in addition to original uniform scale There is also a new tool for texture manipulation which brings up 4 pins positioned on the texture and a central button which has the unique function of filling your polygon with what is contained within the 4 surrounding pins. The process is demonstrated in the images below.

 

The pins can also be moved manually in an advanced mode that will allow the texture to be stretched in a non uniform manner. It works in a similar way to the push pins in Google Sketchup but is set up in a different way and personally I find it much easier to use and understand.

Manipulate has also changed slightly. Previously it produced a set of slightly confusing directional indicators when the user clicked on the element that was to be moved. Now you receive a helpful marker to shows where you have selected which has a number of arrows attached to it clearly indicating the directions or movement available.

 

With the existing simple but strong tool set I think that these additions further strengthen the unique offering from 3Dvia.

If you have read the previous post you will also be aware of the 3D cities that Microsoft is pioneering in Virtual Earth. They look really good and also allow for embedding of new models within the existing cities. Once they are uploaded it also provides for manipulation, allowing you to ensure it is exactly where you want it :@)

Today sees the launch of version 6.1 of the Microsoft Virtual Earth map control. There are some great new features especially considering its not a major release. Here is a quick summary of the highlights:

High Detailed 3d Cities

Microsoft have updated 4 US cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix and Dallas) to include every building and even trees! These “densified” cities look amazing as you can see from the screen shot below from Las Vegas.

These models and even the matching of trees are apparently all done automatically using the technology Microsoft acquired when buying Vexcel.

We can’t wait to start adding our Vscapes high quality photo realistic models to these existing cities like we have already done in Google Earth to give the ultimate tool for property developments.

Birds Eye views with road map overlays (Hybrid Birds Eye)

Microsoft have done an amazing job at adding road maps and labels to their existing birdseye imagery. We were concerned how this might work when we first heard about it but now we have seen the results we are really impressed.

One thing we noticed of interest is that the roads and labels are being overlayed transparently on top of the existing birdseye imagery, rather than creating a whole new set of birdseye tiles. We are hoping this will be done in future for the aerial hybrid views so that road maps could be overlayed on top of our own custom tile layers.

We have already started integrating hybrid birdseye into our EarthwareProperty estate agency mapping as you can see below, this and our new local area information will be available in the next release this month.

Improved Localisation Support

The new Virtual Earth control now supports localisations of the map “dashboard” user controls. There is now support for English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and French.

There are also now improved localised directions for 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian.

Improved directions and new routing features

There are now directions for walking, this uses different rules about what roads you can use in routing. Traffic based routing is now also available but again only in the US and only where traffic information is currently available.

Other minor features

There are a few more changes that are welcomed but might go unnoticed by some.

• Reverse geocoding, allowing you to get the address for a given latitude and longitude, only is the US currently
• Improved support for Safari 2 and 3
• Improved printing support, especially for Firefox and Safari
• New 3d tour videos features on Live.com (we will blog more about this later today)

One major hitch for UK and Maybe Europe

All these new features are amazing and we spent a long time this morning on local.live.com trying them all out. However we did come across one major problem. It appears that Microsoft have decided to redirect all users from the UK (and maybe Europe - please let us know) to Multimap maps (multimap was recently aquired by Microsoft).

While we can maybe see why UK visitors may get better data and features from using Multimap we would like to be able to choose ourselves not have it forced upon us. The biggest issue is we cannot now access our collections and 3d models on local.live.com which is a big issue for us and I’m sure others.

We have however found a work around in that you can use the url below to set your region to the US, therefore not getting redirected:

http://maps.live.com/?q=&mkt=en-us&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

In Summary

We have been really impressed by what has been released today and can’t wait to start integrating them into our interactive mapping products. Once again Microsoft have shown their commitment to driving Virtual Earth forward. Thanks to all the dev team involved its a brilliant release!