MSN Virtual Earth Revealed

jeremyw writes "A day before its official launch, MSN Virtual Earth has gone live. MSN appears to have been inspired by Google Maps in this combination of local search and mapping. Virtual Earth introduces a number of interface enhancements to the now-familiar draggable aerial web map, such as the ability to zoom in using your mouse scroll wheel, and a Location Finder to determine your location to determine your real-world location "using Wi-Fi technology." Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday."

Comments

West to East, or East to West? So easy to forget

[Monte]

I hope Microsoft has their virtual earth rotating in the right direction this time.

I tried to link to the original Knowledge Base entry for this, alas, it doesn't seem to be there any more.

ms and innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

wow microsoft is just leaps ahead of the competition when it comes to innovation

Re:ms and innovation

[Excelsior]

The only thing they "copied" was the dragability.

Um, they copied a lot more than that. They copied resizing the map window to fill up the browser window.They copied the general color scheme. They copied the ability to switch between street maps and aerial photos. They copied DHTML layering to show point data on top of the maps. They copied the entire design for searching, navigating, and finding points-of-interest. And they copied it so closely, they made it cross-browser functional (you can damn well bet if Google Maps didn't exist as a cross-browser functional product, MSN VE would only work on IE).

And they copied the most innovative part of Google maps - tile-based pre-built raster images to assemble dynamic maps. As someone who has developed GIS applications, I can tell you, while this may sound trivial, it is not. Google thought outside the box. The GIS community for years has used vector data to produce one raster image on-the-fly at runtime (like Mapquest). Instead, Google creates small tiled images at every zoom-level they offer and stores them on the server, and thus can produce a map at any location and any zoom-level, and offer it with "dragability". This is a completely new paradigm for interactive GIS apps. The old way does offer some advantages over the new way, but for web-based interactive GIS, the new way is pretty phenominal.

While the rest of the GIS community was happily working to make incremental improvements to the old paradigm, Google innovated a new paradigm. MSN just copied it. There's nothing wrong with copying (well, until the USPTO grants software patents), but don't mistake it for anything other than what it is.

Re:ms and innovation

[Deviate_X]

And they copied the most innovative part of Goggle maps - tile-based pre-built raster images to assemble dynamic ... While the rest of the GIS community was happily working to make incremental improvements to the old paradigm, Google innovated a new paradigm. MSN just copied it.

I have to say that you are wrong about this being a google innovation, these ideas were developed and online well before either google maps or msn's virtual earth. map.search.ch is still in many ways better than what google or msn are offering - i really like th keyboard navigation.

map.search.ch was launched in october 2004 google maps came later in 2005.

Not a good first impression

[defkkon]

Typed in my home town including specifying that it is in Ontario, Canada.

MSN Virtually Useless Earth took me to some little town in the US. Apparently, it completely ignored my criteria.

I love a lot of Microsoft products, but if they're going to compete with the likes of Google Earth and Google Maps, they're going to have to do a lot better than this.

Besides, the interface isn't nearly as clean and fast. Just my two cents.

Re:Not a good first impression

[ect5150]

Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday.

Would that have anything to do with it?

Weird distortion on building outlines?

[philgross]

What have they done to Columbia University's campus map?
Microsoft Version

(correct) Google Maps version

Re:Weird distortion on building outlines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's rendered by the new Windows Vista...

International Support is Pathetic

[aslate]

Looking at London, i see a label with a massive expance of blank map around it. No London boroughs, areas, regions, anything. If i tried to find my house it wouldn't go very far. You can't even zoom in very far.

At least Google had a great service for the areas they had up, then expanded it to the rest of the world. The MS map seems to have poor support all round.

And setting aside the international support, this was very slow and seemed "clunky" compared to the Google interface. I do like the scrollwheel support and the use of the same images for various zoom levels, as you don't reload the map on every zoom.

Hyperspace is supported!

[BillsPetMonkey]

On the map view, zoom into my hometown near Birmingham, UK using "Road Map" view.

Switch to "Aerial Photo" view and BLAM! straight in downtown Atlanta, USA.

It's amazing. I never knew my hometown could do that!

Misfeatures that bug me

[team99parody]

The part that leaves me with a bad impression is that a lot of core browsr funcationality is broken which makes this really tough to use.

• If you do a "local search" it brings up a panel with links - however if you shift-click or right-click on those links there's now way to open the new page in a new window.
• If I hit the back button I don't go back to my previous local search results. Heck, somehow they messed with my browser button so the back button never leaves their site. I remember back when porn companies did this, but I don't expect to see reputable organizationos do this.
• I can't right-click on the image to bring it up in it's own window -- a normal web-browser feature that is very nice for printing maps without wasting paper&ink on useless headers and footers.

Basically, this page combines all the limitations of a web brosers with all the inconsistancies-and-difficulty-of-use of a PC application.

The one thing that made the Internet easy-enough-to-use to make everyone comfortable with it is that all pages worked the same way (back button works) and all links worked the same way (same right-click-menu). Why does Microsoft feel a need to change this?

Something odd about Ground Zero?

[Kappelmeister]

I'm not sure, but I think Microsoft may be living in a bit of denial...

On the other hand, it took only a week or two for them to update Flight Simulator!

Re:Just me?

[Tim C]

Would you prefer that google had no competition? Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement, after all.

I think it's rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up.

I don't think that's obvious at all. It's perfectly possible to take someone else's idea, improve upon it, and produce a superior product. After all, they've just done most of the hard work and expensive R&D for you.

Re:West to East, or East to West? So easy to forge

[Monte]

I always assumed it was Gates' ego - he honestly believed the sun should rise on him before most of the rest of the U.S.

Re:Interesting

[Seanasy]

They both get their data from NAVTEQ. If you look in the lower right corner of MS Earth, you'll see "© 2004 NAVTEQ." In Google maps you'll see "© 2005 NAVTEQ."

So, they're using older vector data. They're using older imagery, too. For most places MS uses USGS DOQQs, probably from 1999. Google, for urban areas at least, uses more recent satellite imagery. But outside of urban areas, Google uses low-res Landsat imagery which is fairly useless for this application.

Teraserver

[TheAncientHacker]

Let's see. Microsoft did Teraserver back in 1998. I guess, by your own definition, the tables have turned...

He's Dead Jim

[Thanatopsis]

Stop it already, he' dead Jim. I think the servers got slashdotted. Never have seen Google go under in a slashdotting.