Microsoft Virtual Earth: just the beginning

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 November 2006 04:31

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft has enhanced Live Search with a new service, Virtual Earth giving searchers the option to display search results as two-dimensional views or three dimensional models. However another technology Microsoft debuted earlier this year gives it the potential to create three dimensional images of any location from user-submitted photographs.

According to Microsoft Virtual Earth uses "new technology [that] compiles photographic images of cities and terrain to generate textured, photorealistic 3-D models with engineering level accuracy."

At present Virtual Earth is available only to US users of Live Search and provides three-dimensional models of 15 US cities: San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth. Terrain imagery in 3-D is available globally, and Microsoft says it expects to offer 3-D imagery in an ever expanding set of cities. Other features provided by Live Search include access to real-time traffic information in select major US cities, and access to business listings "Yellow Pages" and people listings "White Pages".

Microsoft has not elaborated on the technology underpinning Virtual Earth. However, back in August it launched Photosynth,  a new photo-browsing system claimed to "enable people to combine their photos with thousands of others collected on the Internet to present a detailed 3-D model which gives viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle."

According to the Photosynth website, the process begins with "nothing more than a bunch of digital photos," that "might be a mixture of images from many different cameras, shooting conditions, dates, times of day, resolutions, and so on."

If the technologies of Virtual Earth and Photosynth were combined, users could be invited to submit photos, initially perhaps of famous landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty. Photosynth could combine these to create a 3-D virtual tour around the statue which could be accessed via Live Search with Virtual Earth.