Introduction
Here is a quick review of the new Virtual Earth 3D that Microsoft launched on their Local Live site. If you don’t care about reading about it, just jump to http://local.live.com/ and get into the action right away.
Please note, that Microsoft have put a restriction in the installation so you have to change your Windows Regional Settings to US-English before you can successfully complete the installation.
Installation
When you choose to install the Virtual Earth 3D on the web site, it will first launch a 500KB installation, which then redirects you to a download of the Windows Installer setup that is a few MB in size. Installation is quick and easy, just remember to read my note in the introduction section.
Navigating in 3D
So there are two ways you can pan and rotate in the 3D view and that’s using the left mouse to pan and if you hold the CTRL key, the left button will tilt and rotate the view. I hope Microsoft will add support for mouse button 3 (scroll wheel button) so I can more easily navigate with the mouse only.
Navigation with the pen on a Tablet PC is not easy as the right-click doesn’t tilt and rotate but allows you to add pins and quickly zoom to street or region level.
Make sure you use the sidebar on the web site to quickly jump between the major US cities where there are 3D models for you to look it. I don’t know if you can find elsewhere where there are 3D models; leave a comment here if you find something interesting to share.
Some of the cities you can look at are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and more!
Graphics
So I tested this application on my HP TC 4200 Tablet PC which has nothing more than a integrated Intel graphics chip and it runs smoothly.
When you are navigating around, the plugin will continue to download more buildings and higher resolution textures. So if things look a bit gray when you first navigate around, just stop navigating for a little while and you can see when it’s downloading new content.
Screenshots
Here are some screenshots I captured while using the Virtual Earth 3D. I have been to Las Vegas and Houston in the USA, so it’s fun navigating through The Strip in Vegas and checking out the places that I visited while I was there for the MIX06 conference. Treasure Island is the hotel I stayed at.
Google Earth
Some of you might say that this has already been done by Google and that Microsoft is playing catch-up. And in some ways that is correct, Google have had a solution for 3D buildings for a while in the Google Earth application. But the biggest difference now is that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D has textures on the models which makes all the difference in the world. Just have a look at the comparison of Houston.
(whops, the Toyota building is still under construction on Google Earth)
Conclusion
There are many useful and educational things that comes from a system like this, and hopefully Microsoft will open up the API for it (maybe it already have?) so developers can start making mashups and other cool stuff. Flight simulator anyone? I have heard that the 3D models used on Virtual Earth 3D are taken from Microsoft Flight Simulator.
I wonder why Microsoft made this into a standard Windows Installer setup and not just a standard ActiveX hosted on the web site. Since it’s only running within the web browser, why not have it install on the web browser as well?