Bing Maps Gets New Features Including 270TB Of Bird’s Eye Imagery
Bing Maps announced a number of new additions today, including a more expansive collection of Bird’s Eye Imagery locations, new Venue Maps and a Report a Problem feature.
Microsoft announced that it has added its largest-ever batch of Bird’s Eye imagery to Bing Maps — nearly 270 terabytes of data, or the equivalent of 100,000 DVDs, as the company tries to keep up with the 3D mapping capabilities offered by its competitors.
So far, Microsoft has published a total of 1,452,958 sq km, or half a petabyte of data, in Bird’s Eye scenes from around the world. The Bing Maps coverage for this release is shown in yellow (it’s mainly for the US, some Europe, plus a little Canada and Australia):
As for Venue Maps, these allow you to navigate your way around malls, airports, amusement parks, stadiums, and more on your computer or Windows 8 mobile device. Venue Maps automatically show up when you zoom in while using Bing Maps. Purple and green polygons will appear, and clicking on one will pop out a directory with a full list of points of interest that you can explore from a top-down view.
Bing Maps new ‘Report a Problem’ feature involves a link that appears in a box when a user clicks on a location. After clicking the link, a user is given the option to select whether a location is currently empty, if there is a new venue in the existing location, or submit comments to identify more specific issues.
[Via]
