As of May 2nd, Microsoft has released a 22 terrabyte data update to its Virtual Earth mapping system, which has included a number of Scottish areas within its Bird’s Eye views. These are:
- Aberdeen, UK
- Cumbernauld, UK
- Dundee, UK
- Dunfermline, UK
- East Kilbride, UK
- Edinburgh, UK
- Falkirk, UK
- Glasgow, UK
It’s also worth looking around the edges of the ‘official’ areas, as coverage can be found to extend further than might be assumed from the names given.
You will find these available when you use Microsoft Virtual Earth to view of our locations in the relevant areas, or their Live Search mapping service - watch for the Bird’s Eye option becoming bold, rather than greyed, when images are available.
Better still is to use Mutimap, which we recently mentioned was sharing information with Virtual Earth, or Live Search.
Using Multimap, you get the advantage of what we feel to be a better interface than that now offered by Virtual Earth - it has a proper slider to set zoom level, and doesn’t force you to zoom through every level using only + and - buttons, and has the further advantage of offering users the option of browsing areas using Ordnance Survey mapping, available when zoomed in relatively close.
Further advantages of the Multimap view are Camera and Area icons that appear over the view when in Bird’s Eye view mode, showing where the Bird’s Eye view is centred, and the extent of its coverage.
The best way to find out out about the various options is really just to play with the maps and views for a while, and notice how the various options are automatically flagged in the area around the option buttons shown to the top left corner of the map, which change to reflect the features available.
Best, however, is at best (sorry) a relative term, and from the tests we’ve tried on some of the more obscure spots we’re interested in, we’ve found that by using Live Search in 3D mode and switching to Bird’s Eye view, we can get more viewing options, and zoom in closer to the selected point. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re winning any better resolution in the view, but does mean getting closer in to the available view, which can still be useful if the source image is good enough.
It seems that both providers have strengths and weaknesses, and it’s just a case of trying both in cases where you want to extract the most from what’s available.
It looks as if time may be catching up with some of the artefacts that have survived from the Clyde’s shipbuilding days, with the collapse of an 80 ton crane in BAE Systems’ shipyard in Govan today.
