There are certain areas of the world where Virtual Earth's imagery is, well, low resolution. Let's face it, the world is a huge place and Virtual Earth just having had it's 3rd birthday is only in the initial phases of rolling out imagery and photography to cover the world. For those of you who just can't wait, have a specific area you want covered or need more recently updated imagery/photography than what's native to Virtual Earth there's a new service from TerraPixel called Image Patch . Image Patch uses the raster overlay capabilities built into Virtual Earth to render their own imagery and photography (a la MapCruncher ). There are several different types of layers in which they will patch...
Just another friendly reminder that we're going to deprecate a couple older version of Virtual Earth - specifically, v3 and v4 are going down August 31, 2008 September 22, 2008. Don't say I didn't tell you so, because I've warned you a couple times now. Yes, the dates keep moving back, but now we're locked in. Virtual Earth Auto-Upgrade Postponed (June 12, 2008) Version 6.0 to 6.1 Auto-Upgrade Alert & V 3-5 Deprecation Reminder (May 8, 2008) Deprecating Older Versions of Virtual Earth (March 3, 2008) Plus, don't forget about the auto-upgrade to Version 6.1. So, if you're on v3 or v4 we are completely retiring these versions and you'll want to move completely off of these. If you're on v5...
The European Environment Agency and Microsoft have teamed up to launch a new campaign to monitor the quality of bath water across Europe - Eye on Earth Water Watch . OMG - what is going on in Europe that it is necessary to monitor this?? Forget it. I don't want to know. In any case, the site showcases Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Spatial) and Virtual Earth in the one-two spatial punch that we keep bring to your doorstep. You can zoom in to see the EEA water quality rating and even report problems you see at certain beaches along the coast. Something is going on on the northeast coast of UK which is just freaking me out. You can check out the official press release on the Microsoft EMEA Press Centre...
Today, we're announcing a closer and much deeper relationship with ESRI by integrating Virtual Earth into their ArcGIS Desktop product. As a part of the version 9.3 release, Virtual Earth will natively be a premium content layer so you can simply select to view your data on our roads, high resolution aerial photography and Bird's Eye imagery. This is different from the " ESRI ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for Virtual Earth " because that is working directly with the JavaScript controls. The big news today is that right in ESRI ArcGIS Desktop 9.3 you will have Virtual Earth maps to better visualize your data. Now, this doesn't give you a free pass to publish data onto Virtual Earth maps...
For as long as I've worked at Microsoft I've seen this issue with a 10,000 pushpin limit in MapPoint 2002, 2004, 2006 and, yes, it still exists in 2009 . The issue is this: if you try to import more than 10,000 addresses into MapPoint you'll get the error, "Only 10000 records may be mapped at one time using street address." The limitation is there for a couple reasons - one around performance and the other around keeping people from obtaining free geocodes from the MapPoint 2009. So, how do you you overcome this if you just want to map more than 10,000 points? The answer - you have to geocode your data source prior to importing into MapPoint 2009. Once you have your data geocoded...
Don't like JavaScript? You want your managed code with the new wave of AJAX maps? Well, the long awaited Virtual Earth ASP .Net Server Control is now available for download as a part of the Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio . Here are some of the features and benefits of the control: Toolbox – The Virtual Earth Map control is available in your Visual Studio toolbox with the rest of your controls. Just add it to your library and it will be there for you when you need a map. Drag and Drop – Like any control in Visual Studio, you can drag and drop the control from toolbox onto your application, set the respective properties you want and off you go . Server Side Events –...
The mysterious Virtual Earth ERO (aka enhanced roll overs). Coded with just a little JavaScript and a lot of Cascading Style Sheets, there is so much to learn and understand about those little buggers and not much of it is documented. Well, Geoff Innis (Virtual Earth Technical Specialist out of Toronto) took the time to do a nice little write up for an application he built recently and so, I present it to you below. Info Boxes allow us to present information to users about the shapes we add to our maps. We can extend this ability to present information with the use of tabs within our info boxes, to present more content to our users, in a structured manner. With the VEShape.SetDescription Method...
Awwwwe yeah, I'm coming home San Diego! I love a free trip home. Microsoft Virtual Earth will have a significant presence at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego August 4 - 8, 2008. We've had some strategic announcements with ESRI this year and with the integration of Virtual Earth and ArcGIS Server things just got interesting. At the very least, we'll have a booth at the show and I'll be working the first 2 days (others will work all week), so if you want to chew the fat stop by and let's talk shop. Since I know at least one person will ask, yes, Roger Mall (who has spearheaded our the Microsoft / ESRI and many other partner relationships) will be there for the whole show. There...
It's been a day since I announced trueSpace for Virtual Earth Development and I figured I'd post a few hiccups I had to overcome while developing my ever-so-cool Random Cubes . This won't be the end all support FAQs with trueSpace (you should go to their forums for that), but just a few tidbits that may help you since I fell into these same pitfalls. Upload Error This one took me a while to figure out. Having zero experience with 3D I felt like a real idiot when I realized what was going on. When I'd finished created my model and I was ready to upload it into Live Search Maps I would on occasion get this "Error Event - Export to VE Collection not finished successfully." This is the generic error...
Today is a big day. BIG DAY. As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE ! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models...
14.3 TB of new imagery for Microsoft Virtual Earth. Save money on gas....use Live Search Maps powered by Virtual Earth . Ortho United States (UltraCam, Microsoft Proprietary) Elizabeth, NJ West Allis, WI Paterson, NJ Pasadena, TX Austria Entire country! Belgium Tournai, Belgium Aalst. Belgium Verviers, Belgium Sint Niklass, Belgium Hasselt, Belgium Genk, Belgium Mouscron, Belgium Mons, Belgium Oostende, Belgium Mechelen, Belgium Leuven, Belgium Kortrijk, Belgium La Louviere, Belgium Denmark Aalborgk, Denmark Kolding, Denmark Arhus, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Esbjerg, Denmark Fredericia, Denmark Silkeborg, Denmark Roskilde, Denmark Randers, Denmark Vejle, Denmark Odense, Denmark...
Marc Schweigert is trying to replace me as the Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist. I kid, I kid! He has bigger fish to fry, but his passion for geospatial solutions is impressive to say the least. He's just put out ANOTHER TWO how-to videos about Microsoft Virtual Earth . These videos are only the beginning of showing the power of SQL Server and Virtual Earth coming together to bring simple interfaces into geographic information systems. Not to mention extensible solutions for building interfaces into SharePoint, Silverlight (when available) and WPF (when available)! Saving Virtual Earth Polygons to SQL Server 2008 : In this screencast, I show you how to draw a polygon on a Virtual Earth map...
Isaac Kunen from the SQL Server team published an outstanding MSDN article entitled, " Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet ." This is a great article for those of you who are just getting started in GIS, are curious about GIS but intimidated by math and coordinate systems or just plain geeky and like maps. The article will help you get a grasp on different map projections, coordinate systems, why we flatten maps, and how to model maps when transform the data from just data to an actual image. These are just a few of the concepts Isaac covers in the article - there is much more to it! You really will have a new appreciation for what we do to create...
Perhaps you've noticed that I've added a little (non-Virtual Earth) map to my blog. Well, as the story goes...I'm always crawling the web for maps. Obviously, I have some kind of passion (read as obsession) with online mapping. So, I come across this little map with dots on it that is appearing on a lot of the blogs. Yes, I'm aware of ClustrMaps. What was most interesting is that as I was discovering this whole WorldMaps/ClustrMaps thing this guy from inside Microsoft was talking about WorldMaps on one of the internal aliases. So, I emailed him and said, "DUDE! You're Microsoft. Why don't you use Virtual Earth maps?!?" Well, that was a good idea so he did it. And, now WorldMaps is available...
There are a couple ways to improve performance in when using Microsoft Virtual Earth. One is to limit the number of tiles requested to the client from the control, but when do you want to do this? If you're considering limiting the number of tiles downloaded to the client, the best way is to limit the number of rings of tiles being downloaded to the client by using the map.SetTileBuffer() method . When the map control is downloaded to your machine a set of tiles will be sent to the user to create the map interface. By default, the initial Virtual Earth map load will download only the tiles inside the view port of your DIV; however, once the user pans the SetTileBuffer method kicks in and depending...
