LiveSide - News blog : 3DVia

Virtual Earth, Live Maps update: Lots of new features, new SDKs, more

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:41:35 GMT

Virtual Earth 6.2, a big new update to Live Maps, and new access to a 3DVia content library where you can download, mash-up, and include 3D content on your 3D maps collections just went live. Lots to tell you about, and we’ll be going into more depth on Virtual Earth soon, but here’s some highlights. Thanks to Virtual Earth Evangelist Chris Pendleton for keeping us in the loop on this one.

We’ll hit the high points, but for more, check out Chris’s 3 blog posts:

New Feature Release of Live Search Maps!

New Version of Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D and 3DVia

Announcing the Virtual Earth Web Service and Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2

and for a good point by point feature list of what’s new in Virtual Earth 6.2, Mark Brown posted too:

Announcing: Virtual Earth 6.2 and Virtual Earth Web Services 1.0

Live Search Maps

Lots of new stuff in Live Search Maps, including:

Communities: Collections are indexed and available for search “seconds” after they are loaded. In addition, Collections data is used where no Business listings are available for business searches

Local search: Improvements include filters refine searches based on what you are searching for (hotels, for example)

Details page: Moved from a tabbed model to inline, allowing for much more content:

Multi-Point directions: Enables you to generate a single set of directions for reaching multiple destinations

Landmark hints: Hints will show up in driving directions in North America, telling you to “turn at the Taco Bell”

Weather: in 3D real time weather, based on 14 cloud types, updated every 3 hours, will be available

Virtual Earth 3D and 3DVia

Go to Live Search Maps and click on 3D, and you’ll be prompted to update to a new version. At the same time, you can update the 3DVia bits (from Chris’s blog):

As for Dassault, well, they've just opened up their 3D model inventory hosted in 3DVia.com's 3D online content library as a part of a program called "remix" which is effectively a 3D mashup creator with Virtual Earth. You now have access to thousands of models hosted on 3DVia.com that can be "remixed" in 3DVia and hosted on Live Search Maps for rendering in your Virtual Earth application. Whoa. Additionally, they've updated the UI and navigation to be more user friendly (thank you!) and released video tutorials illustrating among other things how to build a house in less than 5 minutes.

Virtual Earth 6.2 and Virtual Earth Web Services 1.0

We’ll be going into more depth on Virtual Earth here on LiveSide soon, but both the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK and the Virtual Earth AJAX Control SDK on MSDN have been significantly updated. Check the posts from Chris and Mark for more, and check out their webcasts (from both Chris and Mark), coming up later in the week.

Virtual Earth 3D Tours: starting to get the hang of it

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:06:00 GMT

We got our first glimpse of Virtual Earth 3D Tours at Searchification, but it wasn't much more that a glimpse, and when it went public we were scrambling a bit to get it figured out and get a post up all at the same time. Well since then we've checked out a few collections that seemed to do more than the one we quickly put together, and when Laura Foy over at Channel 10 posted a video featuring Steve Lombardi things started to make a little more sense.

Click on the picture to watch Laura's report on VE 3D on Ch 10

So this time I went back and edited the little collection I threw together, touring some Microsoft landmarks, cleaned up the views a bit and captured the whole thing in a .wmv file, which I uploaded to MSN Soapbox.

Some notes on the whole process:

Definitely some quirks in the system. I kept getting duplicates of collection items, still not sure how, but they were easy enough to delete.
Would have been fun to start with a "world view" and zoom in to Redmond. That may be possible by capturing an initial pushpin, but it seems like it should be an option. Obviously a lot more playing around to do (and if you've been playing with Virtual Earth 3D, leave comments on what you've learned!).
I wasn't very successful capturing a Bird's Eye view at a distance I wanted in the collection. Bird's Eye captures reverted to a high-level view.
I was able to move across the Red West campus by placing more than one pushpin, but I could see an immediate desire to follow a set of driving directions, which doesn't seem to be supported as of yet.
The video recording process is a bit slow, but you are warned about it, and offered a chance to cancel.
Capturing the tour in video gives a much more complete rendering of the scenes, at least on my system. If you look carefully at the end during the "Red West spin" sequence, you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Rainier in the distance, as well as quite a bit more detail in general.
And for any Microsoft purists out there, my naming techniques on the buildings were quick and dirty. The titles show up on the video but not on the collection when viewed in Virtual Earth 3D (but in VE 3D you get the details with extra picture etc that you don't see in the movie)

Here's the link to the collection: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&cid=629D3050E0813A28!562&encType=1

And here's the video I uploaded to Soapbox. Came in at 2 minutes and 34 seconds, at 13.5mb for the .wmv:

(note: I haven't had a lot of success accessing the video from Soapbox as I was posting this, here's hoping it shows up for you ;) )

Video: LiveSide Tour of Microsoft from Virtual Earth 3D

All in all it is an impressive set of tools. Next I need to learn more about 3DVia, and continue to build my secret entrance into Red West (which Sarah used as her screenshot over on on10, which I thought was kind of funny ;).

Microsoft and Dassault Systemes announce 3DVia - again

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:09:00 GMT

In a press release dated October 18, Microsoft and Dassault Systemes formally announced the launch of 3DVia:

REDMOND, Wash., and PARIS — Oct. 18, 2007 — Dassault Systèmes (DS), a world leader in 3-D and product life-cycle management (PLM) solutions, and Microsoft Corp. today launched Microsoft^® Virtual Earth™ -3DVIA (Technology Preview). This free online application, developed by Dassault Systèmes, allows consumers to imagine and create realistic 3-D models — such as of buildings and structures — then share them through Microsoft Virtual Earth and online communities.

The new, free, online application actually has been live since Tuesday the 16th, where it was also referred to in the press release announcing the final updates to the fall Live Search release, for Live Search Maps:

Innovative visualization and 3-D. Coverage of bird’s-eye and 3-D imagery has been increased to cover 80 percent of the U.S. population. In addition, nearly 200 complete cities are available in 3-D, and customers can now combine views of 3-D imagery with Live Search’s unique 45-degree bird’s-eye images, giving a complete and detailed geolocation experience. In addition, people who use Live Search Maps can create and share their own 3-D models of buildings through an alliance with Dassault Systemes.

Anyway, you can get to 3DVia (after first installing Virtual Earth 3D beta, by clicking on 3D on the Live Maps, and then Add a 3D Model from the Collections tab:

From there you install the app, and then you're on your own. I've been playing a bit with 3DVia, but although the interface is pretty easy to get around, it takes both patience and practice, neither of which I have time for right now. Ultimately the idea is to create 3D models by placing them in Virtual Earth 3D, saving them, and then sharing them as collections. Pretty neat, with a lot of potential.