Virtual Earth 3D

I am taking advantage of the holiday season to take some much needed time off and have not been blogging, as you have no doubt noticed. I have just a quick follow-up to the last blog entry about Santa in Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

Santa's Village in Virtual Earth 3D, published on the MSNBC Today Holiday Guide last week, has today been replaced by a Santa Tracker in Virtual Earth 3D. My colleague Chris Pendleton, creator of the application, tells all in his blog and even offers to share his code later this week!  Chris is apparently moved by the seasonal spirit of giving!

What I will quickly tell you is that the Santa Tracker has a built in timer, so that any time before Dec. 25 @ 5AM in Samoa (last time zone) it will locate Santa in a different location. It changes every 7.05 minutes so if you want to see it working, check back periodically and you will see Santa in action.  Here is a snapshot of Santa en route as I write:

Where the Santa Tracker is most impressive is when Santa can be found over one of the close to 300 3D city models in Virtual Earth. Here is a screenshot from Chris' blog where he captured Santa in one of those locations:

Remember that you can control the 3D environment using the map controls on the page or your mouse and keyboard (I provided instructions in my last blog entry and on the Santa Tracker page). OR ... if you really want to have fun, hook up the kid's Xbox controller and fly around like Ol' St. Nick himself!

Have a great time with the kids! And enjoy the holidays.

-=Virtual Jerry

I am taking advantage of the holiday season to take some much needed time off and have not been blogging, as you have no doubt noticed. I have just a quick follow-up to the last blog entry about Santa in Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

Santa's Village in Virtual Earth 3D, published on the MSNBC Today Holiday Guide last week, has today been replaced by a Santa Tracker in Virtual Earth 3D. My colleague Chris Pendleton, creator of the application, tells all in his blog and even offers to share his code later this week!  Chris is apparently moved by the seasonal spirit of giving!

What I will quickly tell you is that the Santa Tracker has a built in timer, so that any time before Dec. 25 @ 5AM in Samoa (last time zone) it will locate Santa in a different location. It changes every 7.05 minutes so if you want to see it working, check back periodically and you will see Santa in action.  Here is a snapshot of Santa en route as I write:

Where the Santa Tracker is most impressive is when Santa can be found over one of the close to 300 3D city models in Virtual Earth. Here is a screenshot from Chris' blog where he captured Santa in one of those locations:

Remember that you can control the 3D environment using the map controls on the page or your mouse and keyboard (I provided instructions in my last blog entry and on the Santa Tracker page). OR ... if you really want to have fun, hook up the kid's Xbox controller and fly around like Ol' St. Nick himself!

Have a great time with the kids! And enjoy the holidays.

-=Virtual Jerry

Anyone who has seen me demonstrate Virtual Earth through our Virtual Earth powered Live Search Maps site at conferences knows how much I love showing off our Virtual Earth 3D environment, especially using my Xbox controller plugged into the laptop USB port so I can fly over and through the 3D city models and course along the 3D terrain. And most of you seem to enjoy this as well, something I have noted when I step away from my workstation and leave the controller unattended.

Well, Virtual Earth is not just for grown-ups anymore. As of today, you and your kids can explore Santa's Village in Virtual Earth 3D. Just visit our portal to Santa's Village in 3D found on the Holiday Guide page of the Today section of the MSNBC site. You will be greeted by the below image of the village which you simply click on to immerse yourself in Santa's Village in 3D. If you have not yet toured Virtual Earth 3D through Live Search Maps, you will first be prompted to download the plug-in necessary to manage the 3D experience.  Then you and your kids can have fun touring and exploring through the village.

If you have an Xbox controller, be sure to plug it in and use it! Don't worry, your kids will know how. Otherwise, you can still use your mouse and keyboard to zoom, pan and tilt (hold control key down and click and drag with mouse to desired angle).

Note that when you first launch the program, you will zoom from a globe view right into the pushpins indicating the location for the village. Depending on the speed of your machine (note system requirements on Today Holiday Guide page), it could take a minute or two to load the models so don't give up if all you see for a moment are the pushpins. Once the models start loading, keep an eye on the Virtual Earth globe load status indicator. Once it is completely blue the models in view are completely loaded.  (Note: if your computer doesn't meet the base system requirements, you can still see a video of the application captured by my colleague Chris Pendleton on his Virtual Earth Evangelist's Blog.)

Be sure to check the Toy Factory windows to see what is happening inside and keep checking back through Christmas ... no promises, but I believe it is possible more models could be added between now and Christmas.

The application itself was written by our Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist extraordinaire and the models were created by modeling artists Augusto Michelis, Heidi Simonsen, Stephen May and Matthew Collins, using the trueSpace 3D modeling and authoring tool from Caligari, a subsidiary of Microsoft acquired in February of this year. trueSpace is fully-featured and powerful modeling tool that is available for download at no cost. Once models are created, they can be exported in .OBJ format for integration in the Virtual Earth 3D environment. Have fun with the kids with this holiday application.

And lest I forget to say so ... Happy Holidays from the Microsoft Virtual Earth team!

-=Virtual Jerry

Today the Virtual Earth product team released a new version of the Virtual Earth platform and the Live Search Maps that it powers. For a complete listing of new features and capabilities, see today's entry in the Virtual Earth Developer's blog.

But readers of this blog, being 3D enthusiasts, will be most interested in the newest enhancement to the Virtual Earth 3D environment: global, near real-time weather visualization through cloud simulation.

Check out these views of Houston and Dallas!

Simple explanation: the Virtual Earth rendering engine produces 3D cloud models based on a gridded global weather forecast that is updated every three hours.  The rendering engine creates a visual representation of this data to reflect the type of clouds, consistent with the altitude/depth/coverage characteristics at the location being viewed.  Multiple cloud layers are enabled, and a variety of cloud types are supported.  A text string (bottom right screen) shows the date/time at which the forecast is valid. 

To limit the obscuration of the ground imagery, several cloud fading features are embedded: the clouds fade as the viewer moves above them in altitude, and the clouds fade as the viewing angle approaches nadir. The following screenshots demonstrate this.

Observing from overhead at this angle, we are able to see the clouds over Tampa.

But looking straight downward, we lose the clouds so that we are able to get a clear view of Virtual Earth 3D Tampa from this altitude despite the presence of clouds in the real word location. Pretty cool!

I am pretty excited by this enhancement! With the constant improvements to the photorealism of the building models through enhanced texturings, the recent introduction of foliage (select cities, for now), and now the addition of weather ... Virtual Earth 3D is setting itself apart from the competition as  the most immersive and realistic 3D representation of the real-world available to users over the web or for developers to leverage in their 3D applications.

Here's what I mean ... check out this Virtual Earth 3D Tampa scene. The combination of the foliage, detailed building texturing and the clouds makes this 3D scene the next best thing to being there! (Sorry ... have avoided coining that up until now! ... but it's just too true!)

Can you feel it?!! :-)

When you first visit Live Search Maps since this update, you may be prompted to reinstall the Virtual Earth 3D control. It doesn't take long and is painless. Once installed, weather is automatically turned on. You can choose to disable through the Virtual Earth 3D Options windows pictured below.

Click on this button to open the Options window.

Then click on the 3D settings button.

Deselect the checkbox for local weather to disable. As you can see, you can also do this for buildings, building details and trees. Not really sure why you would want to disable any of this, but now you know how. By the way ... while you are here, crank that default max cache setting up to at least 10000 MB, assuming that your system will allow. This will improve your caching as well as your 3D browsing performance.

LASTLY: when you load a 3D city in Virtual Earth, the load status of the 3D scene is indicated by the globe found in the bottom left corner. You can see in the screenshot below that the load is not complete because the globe is not "full". The sequence of load is the building geometry, the textures, trees (where available) and then weather. It may take a moment for the clouds to render ... keep an eye on that globe indicator.

Have FUN!

A feature in the Virtual Earth powered Live Search Maps site that not everyone is aware of, is the ability to make and record videos of 3D tours that you can then share with others for viewing.

Here is an example of one created by our own Virtual Earth Principal Development Manager, Gur Kimchi. To run the tour, you will need to already have the Virtual Earth 3D control installed. If you have not already done this, just open Live Search Maps, select the 3D button in the control panel, and you will be prompted to install. The video is here.

Creating one of these videos is simple. You must first sign into your Hotmail or Windows Live account and create a collection (a group of waypoints of locations of interest you save to a folder). From there, you click on "Actions" in the Collection window. Note the "Tour & make videos in 3D" option which you next select.

The following window opens which prompts your 3D Tour to begin running but note that you are not yet recording at this time. In this window, you can select the speed and the location where you would like the video tour to begin. Then you select "Record", and identify the location on your system where you want the file saved. If you have included notes and photos, you have the option of including those in the video as well.

Have fun!