3DVIA® - 3DVIA

A new release of the Live Maps service is now public and the centerpiece is a much improved “Version 2″ view of several top cities including Las Vegas.  The version 2 update features cities with many more modeled buildings, higher resolution textures, and rendered trees!  Other cities with a version 2 spruce up include Dallas, Denver and Phoenix.

It’s amazing - click on the image to zoom into the improved 3D Las Vegas.

Also featured in the update…an improved Virtual Earth - 3DVIA.  Some of the new enhancements include lighting for contributed models, creation of preview thumbnails when you save a model, and much faster publishing when using high resolution textures.  To try it out while in Live Maps, switch into 3D view, right click where you would like to add a building and choose ‘Add 3D model’.

Other key updates for Live Maps include:

• Export Your Collection to Your Navigation/GPS Device
• The Ability to Add Labels for Birds Eye Imagery
• 1-Click Directions (They call it Party Maps!)
• MapCruncher Integration!…MapCruncher is a tool for registering your raster maps to create map tiles for mashups. You can now add your MapCrunched layers to Collections
• “GeoWeb Exploration”…”one of the largest stores of local content on the web”
• Neighborhood Subscribe via GeoRSS….very cool feature allowing to subscribe to local updates of a given geographic area!
• Tour Enhancements Including Hi-Def Movies
• Directions and Traffic Enhancements
• Improved Display of KML Files Including Google MyMaps Links

There is already some buzz for the update from around the blogosphere including:

• Live Maps hits us with a big release
• New Live Search Maps is Live
• Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams
• New Live Search Maps is Live
• The New Maps Is Live
• The New Release of Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D is now Live!

Congratulations to the Live Maps team!

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Video: 3D Tour of New Microsoft Buildings in Paris

Under the category of cool things that you can accomplish with our very own Virtual Earth - 3DVIA 3D modeling application and Microsoft Virtual Earth, the above fly through was built for a presentation of the proposed Eos Generali building in the heart of the Paris business district.  We worked closely with several groups to produce the video including our old friends from Earthware (a.k.a. siege103 on 3DVIA.com) who produced many of the buildings that you see in the presentation.

Although you may not have the 3D modeling talent of Chris (Earthware) or Marc (3DVIA), you can produce the same concept on Virtual Earth today.  Everything you see above was produced through applications that are freely available right now.  The buildings were modeled with the Virtual Earth - 3DVIA version of our free Shape 3D modeling application and the "fly through" capability comes standard with Virtual Earth.  Marc has already promised a tutorial on how to produce your own that will be posted here soon.

The video was posted earlier on several sites including the Virtual Earth / Live Maps and Earthware blogs.  I like Michael’s second comment on the VE / Live Map blog…"It almost looks just like 2nd Life! I couldn’t help but notice that. It would be interesting to have a sort of 2nd Life in Virtual Earth. Where it takes place in more realistic setting and realistic people, don’t you? That would be neat." 

Interesting, don’t you think?

Just last month, Microsoft blogger Steve Lombardi posted a great article on 3D mashups created utilizing the modeling capability of Virtual Earth - 3DVIA combined with Virtual Earth technology.  He detailed how developers can embed Virtual Earth 3D maps into their web applications and use our Virtual Earth - 3DVIA product to import custom building models.  You can see the final result here.

Although I did not get a chance to post an article on his creation then, this week delivered yet another great example of a 3D mashup posted on the IDV Solutions blog titled “3D, or Not 3D: That Is the Question“.  The article is a great step-by-step tutorial on how to build 3D models for Virtual Earth.  However, in addition to the snappy title that I know he must have been dying to use, the article contains a link to the incredible mashup they have created on their own Virtual Earth a based application.  It is a great example of what you can be accomplished with Virtual Earth - 3DVIA and worth checking out.

Fans of 3DVIA.com might remember the IDV Solutions 3D building  model as one of our featured models in January.  Here is the model on 3DVIA.com. (click the PLAY 3D button to view it).

And here is the here is the same building within the IDV 3D Mashup built on what they call their “experiment”.  What do you think?