First Bird’s eye view
While there may be others we haven’t noticed, and there may be more to come, and even some that will appear on locations we have already included, the Prestwick UNITER Building is the first confirmed Virtual Earth Bird’s Eye View that we have noticed while covering one of our subjects.
You’ll find the Bird’s eye option in the toolbar top left of the displayed area, to the right of the Road, Aerial, and Hybrid options, and notable for not being greyed out once you’ve followed the Virtual Earth link from the Prestwick page.
You get proper high resolution imagery, from a selection of viewing angles, and an extra toy or two to play with, in order to make better use of the available views.
There was actually a small, embarrassing (for someone), news item floating about a couple of weeks ago, not relating to the VE view featured here, but Google’s Street View option, which provides a street level, high resolution environment which you can navigate through - you’ll see the Street View button on their online maps. The problem arose when one of their vehicles, laden with a battery of automated digital cameras on its roof, was given access to a military site somewhere in the UK, and proceeded to take a tour of the place, digitising as it went. This later appeared on the service, and promptly produced the requisite number of ‘Raised Eyebrows’, followed by some discreet negotiations, and the removal of the hi-res images.
I didn’t look into the story in too much detail, as it was a fait accompli by the time I happened to notice it, so anything interesting to have been seen had been well cleared away, however it would seem that the location in question was not particularly secure, in terms of the security level it required, and the resultant actions had more to do with the fact that the incident happened at all, and the Google vehicle and cameras simply should have been given the freedom to roam that it enjoyed.
I hope my account isn’t to far from reality, as I only noticed the story in passing, and depending on the remaining memory cell or two, rather than spending ages tracking it down again (searching for anything with ‘google’ in the string is not a very good idea if you’re in a hurry).
