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With this year's Where 2.0 kicking off this morning, expect the mapping and geodata announcements to hit high gear in a few hours. Microsoft has already [announced a new feature][1] for [Microsoft Live Search Maps][2] which features three-dimensional, photo-realistic maps for New York City, San Francisco and other locations in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
The new views show building and landscape details in 3-D and while the service is a bit slow in rendering, the results, once loaded, are indeed eye-popping (see screenshots after the jump).
The new views show aerial views of landmarks and notably locations such as Times Square, Central Park, Wall Street, Rockefeller Plaza and other famous spots.
To use the new 3-D features You'll need to be running Windows and Internet Explorer. There is a Firefox plug-in as well, but I encountered an error when trying to install it and could never get it to work.
Microsoft has made some odd choices for the initial launch location including, understandably New York and San Francisco, but also smaller cities like Austin, Texas, Savannah, Georgia, and Northampton, England.
In addition to the announced cities, a bit of exploring revealed some additional data in places like Boston (though no 3-D model of Fenway Park as I was hoping for).
While I still prefer Google Earth and find it to be faster and has smoother navigation, the new Microsoft Live Search Maps 3-D data beats the pants off anything Google currently offers.
[1]: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-28NYC3DMA.mspx "New York, New York, in 3-D — Seeing Is Believing"
[2]: http://maps.live.com "Microsoft Live Search Maps"
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