Bing Maps

Bing Maps

Bing Maps Logo Bing Maps Logo
Bing Maps Showing Streetside Bing Maps
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Stable release	Final (v7) / June 3, 2009
Type	Web mapping service Virtual globe
Website	http://www.bing.com/maps

Bing Maps (previously Live Search Maps, Windows Live Maps and Windows Live Local) is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps for Enterprise framework.

Features

Street maps

Users can browse and search topographically-shaded street maps for many cities worldwide. Maps include certain points of interest built-in, such as metro stations, stadiums, hospitals, and other facilities. It is also possible to browse public user-created points of interest. Search can cover public collections, businesses or types of business, locations, or people.

For some countries, like South Africa, and South Korea, Bing Maps has data on highways and some arterial roads, but lacks local streets or alleys. There is also detailed map data available for several global cities in developing countries like Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Mexico City. However, for such cities, the detail of the map decreases significantly as one moves outward from the city center.

Bing Maps, which uses NAVTEQ's map database, is alleged to have a tendency to mark certain unsigned three-digit Interstates in the United States, such as I-444, I-110, I-478, and the Interstate Highways in Alaska. Still other auxiliary Interstates, whose signs are not posted for various reasons, are labeled incorrectly as part of another Interstate. Examples are I-695 (DC), which is labeled as part of I-295 (DC), and I-878, which is labeled as I-678.

Satellite images

Bing Maps also includes several terabytes of satellite and aerial imagery. In many areas, maximum resolution is approximately 4.5 pixels per meter (0.2 m per pixel). Elsewhere, especially in the most remote areas of the world, top resolution is a few orders of magnitude less. Users may toggle labels on or off, choosing whether to see the ground as it would appear from an airplane versus closer to how it would appear on a map.

List of countries that have detailed satellite images:

• Australia
• Canada
• Germany
• India
• Iran
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• New Zealand
• United Kingdom
• United States

File:Virtual Earth Birds Eye.png

Bing Maps viewed in 3D and birds eye view

Bird's eye view

In over 100 cities in the United States, Canada, Japan and in over 80 European locations, a bird's-eye view offers aerial photos from four angles. These Pictometry images are much more detailed than the aerial views from directly above buildings. Signs, advertisements, pedestrians, and other objects are clearly visible in many bird's eye views. Bing uses mutation string s-box algorithms to remove people from images.

Streetside

Streetside provides immersive, panoramic (360 degree) imagery of street-level scenes taken from special cameras mounted on moving vehicles. Launched in December 2009 it contains imagery for selected metro areas in the United States as well as selected areas in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia associated with the 2010 Winter Olympic Games (example: Richmond Olympic Oval).

3D maps

The 3D Maps feature lets user see buildings in 3D, with the added ability to rotate and tilt the angle in addition to panning and zooming. To attempt to achieve near-photorealism, all 3D buildings are textured using composites of aerial photography.

To view the 3D maps, users must install a plugin, then enable the "3D" option on "Virtual Earth". In addition to exploring the maps using a mouse and keyboard, it is possible to navigate the 3D environment using an Xbox 360 controller or another game controller in Windows Vista or Windows XP. As of April 2007, users may also use 3Dconnexion's SpaceNavigator input device.

Currently, roughly 68 cities worldwide may be viewed in 3D, including most of the major cities in the United States and a few cities in Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. Some additional cities have had a select few important landmarks modelled in 3D, such as the Colosseum in Rome. Terrain data is available for the entire world. It is also possible to use a 3D modelling program called 3DVIA Shape for Maps to add one's own models to the 3D map.

The following is a partial list of cities that have most areas rendered in 3D:

Austria: Vienna

Canada: Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Toronto, and Vancouver

France: Toulouse, Paris, and Vannes

Japan: Tokyo

United Kingdom: Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Eastbourne, Gloucester, Liverpool, London, Northampton, Plymouth, Southampton, Swindon, and Wolverhampton

United States: Albany, Albuquerque, Appleton, Atlanta, Augusta, Aurora, Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Boise, Boston, Buffalo, Cape Coral, Cedar Rapids, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Chesapeake, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Coral Springs, Dallas, Dayton, Canton, Decatur, Denver, Des Moines, Detroit, Duluth, Elmira, Flint, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Huntsville, Houston, Indianapolis, Jackson, Jacksonville, Joliet, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Knoxville, Lansing, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Lowell, Madison, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Mobile, Montgomery, Naperville, Nashville, New Haven, New Orleans, New York City, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Orlando, Peoria, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Redmond, Richmond, Rochester, Rockford, Sacramento, Saginaw, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Savannah, Seattle, Shreveport, Sioux Falls, Springfield, South Bend, St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Petersburg, Sunny Isles Beach, Syracuse, Tacoma, Tallahassee, Tampa, Toledo, Topeka, Trenton, Tucson, Tulsa, Washington D.C., West Palm Beach, Wichita, Youngstown, and Various Suburbs of cities.

ClearFlow

Microsoft announced in March 2008 that it will be releasing its latest software technology called “ClearFlow”. It is a Web-based service for traffic-based driving directions available on Bing.com in 72 cities across the U.S. The tool took five years for Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence team to develop. ClearFlow provides real-time traffic data to help drivers avoid traffic congestion. ClearFlow gives information for alternative routes and supplies traffic conditions on city streets adjacent to highways. Clearflow anticipates traffic patterns, while taking into account sporting/arena events, time of day and weather conditions, and then reflects the back ups and their consequential spill over onto city streets. Often, ClearFlow found it may be faster to stay on the highway instead of seeking alternative side street routes, which involve traffic lights and congestion as well.

According to U.S Microsoft employee Eric Horvitz, “…ClearFlow would be integrated into Bing Mobile and other Microsoft mobile applications, including in-car navigation and personal navigation devices.” Clearflow will be available at no cost. The one draw back of Clearflow is that it offers no real-time updates regarding highway and road closures or accidents.

Map Apps

Bing Map Apps is a collection of 1st and 3rd party applications that add additional functionality and content to Bing Maps. Examples of map apps include a parking finder, a taxi fare calculator, an app that maps out Facebook friends, and an app which lets users explore the day's newspaper front pages from around the world. These apps are only accessible through the Bing Maps Silverlight experience.

Other features

• Terrain details are also available in 3D mode.
• Finding, viewing, and printing driving directions
• Traffic viewing (in several major cities)
• User points of interest that can be stored and shared
• Drawing on maps
• A location finder that can locate the user's location
• Integrated route calculation
• Street-level photos (from all directions) in Seattle, WA (city center) and San Francisco, CA (city center). Users can view these photos by driving a race or sports car, or by having a walk. Street-level photography is currently only available as part of a separate tech preview site.
• Content delivery network support added for imagery tiles in June 2009
• Transit directions in 11 cities added in September 2010

History

Bing Maps was based on existing Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft MapPoint, and TerraServer. The original version lacked many of its distinguishing features, including birds' eye view and 3D maps, and the Collections functionality was limited to a single "Scratchpad" of points of interest. Upon its release in December 2005, Windows Live Local became the public face of the Virtual Earth platform. On November 6, 2006, Microsoft added the ability to view the maps in 3D using a .NET managed control and managed interfaces to Direct3D. Microsoft subsequently referred to this product officially as "Live Search Maps", integrating it as part of its Live Search services. On June 3, 2009, Microsoft officially rebranded Live Search Maps as Bing Maps, and the Virtual Earth platform as Bing Maps for Enterprise.

Government Facility Deletions

Early in 2008, following criticism that the similar program Google Earth might be used as a reconnaissance platform by terrorists, Microsoft began a program of deleting high definition aerial views of military bases and other similar installations from Bing Maps.

One example of such a deletion can be witnessed by viewing the Aviano Air Base in Northern Italy.[1] Whilst the base is viewable in low resolution from a low zoom level, zooming in reveals only farmland. It is unclear what location the photographs actually depict. Another example is the naval base in Toulon, France, which was blanked out in white. Also, while trying to view government buildings in Washington D.C. such as the White House, the image becomes extremely pixelated within the property lines. Area 51 can only be seen in a low resolution, Zooming in on the property will come up with no picture.

Updates

• v1 (Beagle) (July 2005)
• v2 (Calypso) (December 2005) - "Bird's-eye imagery" released
• v2.5 (February 2006)
• v3 (Discovery) (May 2006) - Real time traffic, collections, new API
• v4 (Endeavour) (September 2006) - People search, drawing on maps, new imagery
• v5 (Spaceland) (November 2006) - 3D viewer, building models in 15 cities
• Data update (December 2006) - New 3D models and high-resolution imagery for 6 new areas
• Data update (January 2007) - Over 100 European cities with bird's-eye coverage added
• Data update (29 March 2007) - 3.8TB of bird's-eye imagery, orthophotos and 3D models of 5 British cities
• v5.5 (Falcon) (3 April 2007) VE 3D plugin for Firefox, GeoRSS support, area calculations
• v6 (Gemini) (15 October 2007) - New data, party maps, traffic based routing, v6 MapControl, Bird's Eye in 3D, etc.
• v6.1 (GoliatH) (10 April 2008) - Improved quality of 3D models, improved KML support and new export capabilities, street labels on Bird's Eye imagery, MapCruncher integration, HD filming capabilities, Clearflow traffic report system
• v6.2 (Helios) (24 September 2008) - Multi-point driving directions, landmarks in directions, weather, real stars, new data
• Data Update (29 December 2008) - 48TB of road network data
• v6.2 (Ikonos) (14 April 2009) - Performance improvements
• Bing (3 June 2009)
• Bing Maps Silverlight Beta (2 Dec 2009) - Silverlight, Twitter, Streetside
• (Oslo) (11 June 2010) - Silverlight improvements

Imagery Updates

Bing maps frequently update their overhead aerial imagery, on roughly a monthly basis. Each imagery release typically contains more than 10TB of imagery. The latest imagery releases can be seen on the Silverlight powered Bing World Tour application launched in June 2009.

But Bing has either failed to update its overhead aerial imagery or reverted to much older photos for some key areas of the United States, especially for several communities that experienced explosive growth in the 2000s. For example, Bing displays outdated overhead imagery for large portions of Collin and Denton Counties in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex of Texas. These are not insignificant areas as both are among the most populous counties in the United States and contain some of the fastest growing U.S. cities.

Much of the overhead imagery for Frisco and Little Elm dates from before 2002. Some of these images display features that were bulldozed before 2000. Until 2010, Bing did display much more current imagery for such areas, but Bing has reverted to much older photos which had never before appeared on Bing Maps. As of July 23, 2010, Bing imagery still shows most of Frisco and Little Elm as they were when the land was still used for farming and ranching. Missing from these images are notable landmarks such as Frisco's City Hall and the new Frisco Square and Pizza Hut Park, but more troubling is that one cannot see the thousands upon thousands of new homes, hundreds of new businesses and dozens of new schools in any of the neighborhoods built since 2000, except perhaps for the Meadow Hill Estates and Preston Highlands neighborhoods. There, Bing imagery shows homes that were built in 2001, but none built since Spring 2002.

While tens of thousands of new homes, businesses, other facilities and infrastructure cannot be seen in Bing using the aerial view, they can be seen using the "bird's eye" views in most of the areas with outdated overhead imagery.

Compatibility

Microsoft states that Bing Maps needs the following environment:

   *  Windows XP with SP2 or a later version

   * Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

   * Windows Imaging Component

   * 250 MB or more of hard disk space

   * A 1.0-gigahertz (GHz) processor (2.8 GHz or faster is recommended)

   * 256 MB of system memory (1 GB is recommended)

   * A 32-MB video card (256 MB is recommended) that supports Microsoft DirectX 9, with 3D hardware acceleration enabled

   * A high-speed or broadband Internet connection

and

Windows Internet Explorer 6 or later

3.0 or later

Safari 3.1 or later

although elsewhere it claims it can be used with Internet Explorer 6 and later, with Mozilla Firefox 1.5 on Windows and Mac OS X, and with Safari. Firefox on Linux and Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 also appear to work. Opera is stated to be usable "with some functionality limitations".

Users of browsers that are not considered compatible, as well as users of versions of compatible browsers that are not supported, will be directed away from viewing the map without an error message.

WebKit-based browsers have experienced problems accessing Bing Maps and related websites.

The 3D Maps viewer plug-in requires Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 6/7/8 or Firefox 1.5/2.0/3.0.

See also

• Microsoft MapPoint
• Microsoft Research Maps (formerly TerraServer-USA)
• Comparison of web map services
• Google Earth
• Google Street View
• Eye2eye Britain
• Pictometry
• Chandu Thota

External links

• Bing Maps
• Bing Maps for different regions
• Bing Maps Interactive source SDK
• Official Bing Maps team blog