Microsoft Maps

[mswindell]

If you haven't seen this site, it's quite incredible. The US is being mapped by aircraft and digitized. Do a search for Nantucket and you can clearly see boats in slips clear as day, choose any location and use the scroll bar on the screen to zoom in 2d or 3d.

Big Brother is watching.


http://maps.live.com/

[KNOCKABOUT]

I think I saw "The Man!"

[Pericles]

Yes, it is pretty good. I've been using the aerial views to look for houses to buy in the UK. Some areas will go down to 30 yards, but most are 60 yards.

Pericles

[Bruce Hooke]

Very interesting. The layout looks an awful lot like Google Maps. The "angle view" images for my neighborhood are a lot better than Google's aerial photographs, but overall I like the functions in Google Earth better than in Microsoft Maps.

I just checked a couple of more rural locations and the photography for those areas is no better than Google Earth's. In fact even just heading beyond the most urban part of Providence gets you outside the area where angle views are available.

I just noticed as well that the direct overhead aerial photographs for my neighborhood are not just similar in resolution to the ones on Google Earth, they are the exact same images...the same cloud appears on both, as do the same cars in the same locations.

[Concordia...41]

Very interesting. The layout looks an awful lot like Google Maps.

...

I just noticed as well that the direct overhead aerial photographs for my neighborhood are not just similar in resolution to the ones on Google Earth, they are the exact same images...the same cloud appears on both, as do the same cars in the same locations.

Now there's fodder for the conspiracy theory folks. ;)

[Bruce Hooke]

Actually, I think it is pretty simple:

1. Microsoft is copying what they think people like about Google Maps. This is nothing new on Microsoft's part. The love copying other people's ideas.

2. Neither Microsoft nor Google is paying to have the aerial photographs made just for them. That's no surprise. It would be very expensive and a waste of time since there are other sources already out there. It would appear they both ended up using the same source for their photographs, at least in the case of the single comparison I made. My original point was simply that it did not look like there was much reason to choose one system over the other based on the quality of the straight-down aerial photography. The angled photographs on the Microsoft site are more unique, but seem to be quite restricted in their coverage, at least based on the very brief analysis I conducted...

[Thorne]

I'll have to try MS Maps, but the latest version of Google Earth has an angle tool also.

MS is VERY good at copying other's ideas -- just compare the new Vista with the 5-year-old Mac OSX...

http://www.luckhardt.com/oswars.gif

[Mike Keers]

Bruce has it right. Do any of you recall the old MS Terra Server (?) aerial photographs? I pulled up and printed a pic of my land way back around 1992 taken by government aerial survey back in the 80's, and that was the same picture that Google first showed when I checked their system when it was new, so they were showing very old mapping pics from the 80's for my neighborhood. Within the past year they have updated the aerial photo, but it's still a coupla years old, I can tell by the boats and vehicles parked in my yard and the recently built houses that aren't shown.

Still, it's an amazing and fun package (time waster).

[ahp]

I searched for our house and found it, but it is about three years out of date because it shows it under consruction.

[dmede]

Just as an aside, from an industry insider so to speak, 2-3 year old aerial or satellite photography is pretty up to date. When I started this job almost a decade ago, most of what were looking at for base material was 10-30 years old and almost none of it was air photography. It's amazing to see how far public mapping has come in just a few years.

[Bruce Hooke]

I'll have to try MS Maps, but the latest version of Google Earth has an angle tool also.

MS Maps' angle tool is different from Google Earth's. MS Maps is an actual photograph taken from an angle so that you can get more of a 3d feel for the buildings & other major features. You cannot change the vertical or horizontal angle or range of view, but you get MUCH better detail in the images. The reason for the angle view, beyond simply the higher resolution, is, I suspect, to help people who are not so good at reading a straight aerial photograph. By contrast, the Google Earth 3d tool gives you much better control of the angle of the view, but it uses the same straight down photographs, just "drapped" across the landscape. As I see it, the Google Earth tool is mostly about giving you a feel for the landscape, which MS Maps is pretty much useless at since only the most dramatic landscape features will show up well in high-angle photograph.

dmede is certainly right that it is amazing how far we have come in a few years! The idea that all of this would be available at our fingertips would have seemed unbelievable not so many years ago.

[elf]

As I see it, if it's 2-3 years old it's not of much interest to me.

I've been looking at Google and MapQuest aerials since Katrina and all those houses never got drowned out if you ask those maps.

Furthermore, it's been a year since the old Jamestown bridge was blown up and it's still on all the aerial maps.

Boring.

[Bruce Hooke]

Yup. If you need current information none of these are much good. However, they are a heck of a lot better than a lot of topographic maps, many of which have not been updated in a decade or two...

[Bob Smalser]

Pretty inflated expectations considering there are areas within 20 miles of me that have only had USGS topos produced in my lifetime. Before that first USGS topo survey, large areas locally were merely blank spots or glorified blank spots of guesswork and unchecked data.

Those first topographical surveys weren't boring at all. Glad this generation doesn't have to do it. ;)

[Bruce Hooke]

It's the rare map that I find boring!

For the record I'll just note that I did not intend to denigrate the update schedule on topographic maps. I was just pointing out that relatively speaking, the data on systems like Google Earth is pretty current.

[elf]

Well, now, if we're talking about topos, not street maps or aerials, I much prefer to visit topozone, which has those wonderful Delorme maps up for all to examine.

I did a trip to the Lost Coast of California one spring for a week and spent a couple months with topozone studying what it was going to look like when I got there. The exact condition of the shoreline may not have been accurate but I wasn't surprised by the height and depth of the forests or existence of the back roads when I finally arrived.

The only thing topozone didn't tell me was which roads were private.