San Francisco — In a novel display of surprising innovation, software maker Microsoft’s Bing Maps now is jumping into the mapping game by releasing its biggest update yet, now offering 165 terabytes of new high-resolution birds-eye-view of satellite and aerial imagery of locations all over the Earth, from the Moroccan Mountains to Egypt’s pyramids of Giza to the Extraterrestrial Highway in the U.S.
And what an expansive collection of updated map imagery it is, which is now live across Bing Maps around the world, brings a series of enhancements to the Australian edition alongside other countries including North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia–almost 38 million square kilometers.
Further, Bing comments in the accompanying blog post, that today’s release of new Satellite imagery and Global Ortho photography is larger than all of the past updates combined and includes aerial images taken by satellites or aircraft as well as.
This is Microsoft’s mapping engine’s largest satellite data release ever. Before today, Bing Map’s total amount of data was 129TB. So, what can be seen on the search engine’s maps has now more than doubled in size.
Total coverage of new satellite imagery currently live on Bing Maps. (Credit: Bing)
When Microsoft-owned Bing unleashed its Global Ortho Project around a year ago, the search engine team acknowledged the challenge for consumers and organizations using Web-mapping services: ‘Much of the imagery featured there has historically been patchwork of satellite and aerial imagery of different vintage, quality, clarity, and detail,’ Microsoft said in June 2011.
More so, users’ experience was inconsistent at best, the team wrote. But again, with this release a refresh cycle will update previously collected images, focusing on those areas that are more likely subject to change, Bing said.
“People using Bing Maps and applications built on the Bing Maps platform … can trust Bing Maps to provide the same experience regardless of where they search,” the blog said.
According to Microsoft, “equally important, is that wherever you are exploring in Bing Maps, you are likely to find CURRENT imagery.” Bing also mentioned that as of this month, it completed 100 percent of aerial photography of the U.S. and is planning to finish Europe by the end of the year. Besides satellite imagery, the Global Ortho Photography on Bing Maps covers 9.54 million square kilometers.
Burj Khalifa, Dubai, Bing Maps
However, this update was so massive, that Bing Maps has assembled a couple of slide shows depicting both types of updates, which you can find at the Bing Maps World Tour App.
Once you are at the app, look at the left-hand column and click on the “Select Releases” tab. From there, you can choose either the “Aerial – Satellite Jun. 2012” update or the “Aerial – GlobalOrtho Jun.2012” update.
As rivalry among tech titans reaches its peak, early this month, Google unveiled its “next generation of Google Maps,” with 3D imagery, followed shortly by Apple’s announcement that it will ditch Google Maps for its own home-built map system incorporated into iOS 6.
Here are some additional samples of Bing’s new satellite imagery:
Samples of new satellite imagery on Bing Maps. (Credit: Bing)