MS Virtual Earth 3D and Bird's Eye

Microsoft's Virtual Earth is not as well-known as Google Earth, but they have some very impressive 3D models and even more impressive "Bird's Eye" 360-degree close-aerial views.

If you go to

http://maps.live.com/

and have the Virtual Earth 3D extension installed, you can navigate around some amazing views

What's interesting to me about the above view is that it's a mix of close-aerial, and (I think) satellite overlaid with 3D models.  Inside the box on the right-hand side you see a real image of Parliament and the Parliamentary Library looking south-ish.  Outside the boundaries of that box (left side and upper edge) is sat image overlaid with 3D models of Ottawa buildings.

Here's a close view, after rotating to look more towards the north (so with the library in back).

This is the highest-resolution imagery I've seen of Ottawa, and very up-to-date (looks like sometime in the early summer.)

Virtual Earth 3D works in both Firefox (I used version 3) and Internet Explorer (I used version 7), on Windows XP and above.  It does not support the Mac.

Comments

[Marty]

VE runs in 2D mode on Mac OS and will display those Bird's Eye images, however the 3D mode is dependent on DirectX and only runs under Windows.