Bing Maps has announced a host of image updates to both the Bird’s Eye feature and Streetside imagery that offer up some stunning resolution to the included locations.
Bird’s Eye offers a fully rotating view of select places giving not only a 45-degree view of an area but also in a remarkably high quality image. As of today’s update, there’s now 60TB of native Bird’s Eye imagery. To get an idea of what regions have been included in this most recent update, Bing Maps provided a map detailing what areas in the United States and Western Europe that have updates.
One of the areas in Europe that’s gotten an image update is London, which will be hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics later this year. Bing Maps updated the imagery to show the newly constructed Olympic Park in Bird’s Eye, which it provided a before and after comparison for.
After playing around with the Bird’s Eye feature, the quality of the images offered with this view is really something else. I keep looking at this angle of the Financial District in New York City trying to convince myself that this image was actually captured with a camera and not a very convincing and detailed digital model.
As mentioned, Bing Maps also unrolled an expanded group of places that got new and updated Streetside imagery. Several places both in the United States and Europe were included, such as Phoenix, AZ; New York, NY; as well as Paris and Marseille in France. An easy way to check out what parts of the world are now equipped with Streetside navigation, simply zoom out above the area you are curious about and click on the Streetside figure at the top of the map. For instance, here are all the regions in the United States that currently have Streetside support.
Actually, since the Streetside’s only available in the U.S. and the Europe, I’ll go ahead and throw in the map for Europe, as well.
