Microsoft’s Bing Maps team updated its World Tour Application on Monday. The updates now includes over 150 locations that Bing Maps features high-resolution aerial imagery. The imagery is being captured and published as part of Bing Maps’ Global Ortho imagery program. Bing Maps allows you to view the new aerial imagery through an automated slide show mode or manually.
“A challenge for consumers and enterprise organizations using web mapping services has been that much of the imagery featured there has historically been a patchwork of satellite and aerial imagery of different vintage, quality, clarity and detail,” says Microsoft’s Jerry Skaw. “The experience for users of these services has been inconsistent at best.” Microsoft’s high resolution sets is apart from other mapping services. The software giant is creating 30cm aerial blanket coverage of the United States and Western Europe.
Microsoft has spent more than a year quietly publishing its high-resolution imagery to the Bing Maps web site. “The first of it began appearing in August 2010,” says Skaw. At the time of writing, 46% of the project has been captured, around 2,771,192 sq kilometres. Microsoft aims to complete the project by June 2012 and will refresh a lot of what the company has already collected to keep things fully up-to-date.
