MSN Virtual Earth

[dawks]

Back in May, Channel9 previewed MSN's new Virtual Earth mapping service. A direct competitor to Google Maps.

Now July 23rd, the site has gone public. Its pretty sweet. Has most of the same features, and a few extra. Also works pretty good on Firefox. The Satellite images are higher resolution, at least in
San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

New York is black and white for some reason..

Here are two screen shots of MSN Virtual Earth on my Dell 2005FPW.

Trans America Pyramid
Downtown Seattle

I searched MSN, Earth, Virtual, and one other.. not a rep0xy.

 

[Goosemaster]

lol

 

[neutralizer]

Very slow, only b&w for my area while google had color for mine. For other places it does look higher res though.

 

[intogamer]

kinda lags tho...

 

[Goosemaster]

google > *.*

 

[Goosemaster]

maps.google.com +satellite pics for landmarks > *.*

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: intogamer
kinda lags tho...

I does with that menu on the left side open. That partially transparent overlay is killer on the CPU. Close it and it should be smoother.

 

[JoeKing]

jesus that's scary, I can actually see people on the ground :Q

 

[mobobuff]

Wow, it actually has hi-res for a lot of rural areas...

Awesome, I can see all of my old school hangouts .

MSN++ :thumbsup:

 

[Confused]

Doesn't have the UK, doesn't zoom in far enough in the UK, therefore Google > *

 

[mobobuff]

Actually seems to load quite a bit faster than Google.

 

[mobobuff]

Thought this was neat

I'm trying to find Bill Gates's house.

 

[spanky]

its not bad.

 

[MAME]

totally sucks

pics in my area are over 10 years old + B&W

images don't fully load in firefox either more than half the time

 

[intogamer]

eh I have DSL and this shyt still lags...

 

[IronWing]

Looks like a new front end to the old terraserver image collection. Definately an improvement over the terreserver.microsoft.com interface but IMHO not a direct competitor to Google Earth, not better/worse, just different.

 

[rh71]

nvm.

 

[cyberhap]

Overall, I like Google Earth better. But Virtual Earth gives a much better zoom as to where I live. Still, B&W only.

 

Another great Microsoft me-too product. You would think with all those bright people over there they would have an original idea once and a while.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

crappy, full of blocks that won't load, not worth a second glance.

Leave it to Microsoft to copy anything a competitor does, and fudge it good...

 

[HermDogg]

Sweet merciful crap, some of the pictures are 20+ years old!!

 

[Azndude51]

it sux for now, there are blocks that won't load, a lot of black and white, slower than google, and a lot of old pics. THe only thing going for it is that some of the stuff is really high res. There is much room for improvement.

 

[ironcrotch]

MS are the followers once again.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

lol, my neighborhood is over ten years old but it's just alot of dirt in Virtual Earth.

 

[Analog]

:thumbsdown: