If you’re living in the Northern Hemisphere, you have likely noticed that summer is in full effect. ‘Tis the season for ice cream trucks, watermelons, Slip ‘n Slides, roller coasters, baseball, sweat-stenched outdoor music festivals, and, of course, trips to the beach. Speaking of beaches, Bing Maps announced today that its ready to hit the shores of the world to show off its hot new body of maps.
And what an expansive collection of updated map imagery it is, tipping the scales of total map data to 165 terabytes. Bing points out 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. This update was so massive, in fact, that Bing Maps has put together a couple of slide shows depicting both types of updates, which you can find at the Bing Maps World Tour App. Once you’re 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.
Bing provided a map depicting all of the locations included in today’s Satellite image release, which you can as the highlighted sections below.
Likewise, you can see the areas included with the release of Global Ortho imagery.
I recommend clicking the pause button at each stop of the slide show tours because you’ll likely want to zoom in and check out the obscene level of detail in the images (also, if you’re going to click the pause button, you’ll also want to uncheck the “Show Current Release Coverage” and/or “Show Total Coverage” box because otherwise you’re going to still see the colored overlay of the region that identifies the updated regions).
Here’s a couple of examples that are included in today’s release. The first is of a place that never ceases to build completely wacky buildings and islands (yes, islands), Dubai. Gaze upon this island that Dubai appears to have constructed that resembles the trilobite fossil-like island you see anytime some publication wants to show you what a picture of Dubai looks like.
Another stop on the slide show of new releases that caught my eye is the Space Park Promenade in Bremen, Germany.
Here’s one more stop in Germany that takes you to the spectacularly baroque castle of Schloss Moritzburg. Good luck storming this castle.
I’m just going to leave you with that one because that castle is too much fun to look at.