55 Terabytes (TB) Virtual Earth Update Refreshes All Bird’s Eye Vector Overlays

The latest update to Microsoft's Cloud mapping, search and location platform manages to refresh all of the Bird's Eye vector overlays. The Virtual Earth Imagery & Map Data Release, February 2009, is a massive refresh, even though just half the size of the new content introduced by Microsoft just a couple of months back, in January 2009. According to Microsoft the release is focuses on delivering new Obliques (Bird’s Eye) imagery as well as Road map data.

“We just pushed 55TB of additional updated map data and new imagery into Virtual Earth (and Live Search Maps, of course). Another massive release…they just keep coming, don’t they?” stated Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth tech evangelist, Microsoft.

The Redmond company introduced new Obliques (Bird’s Eye) imagery for locations across Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United Stated. The January imagery update to Virtual Earth weighs in at no less than 100 Terabytes (TB). At that time, the software giant integrated new content into its VE platform from DigitalGlobe. The update came as a consequence of Microsoft licensing Digital Globe satellite imagery in 2008. Via DigitalGlobe, the Redmond company had access to premium, high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery covering in excess of 460 million square kilometers, all of which found its way into Virtual Earth. But in addition to the new Obliques (Bird’s Eye) content, Microsoft also introduced new road data in the February 2009 55 TB VE refresh.

According to Pendleton, the update brings to the table a “refresh of North America map data; refresh of European Countries map data; refresh of Asia-Pacific Countries map data; refresh of Australia map data; refresh of Japan map data; refresh of World Routable map data; new Localization of Italy, France, Germany and Spain at zoom level 1-9; new Localization across Western Europe in Italian, French, German and Spanish at zoom levels 10-21; refresh of all Bird’s Eye vector overlays; added localization to mobile tile set and added localization to hillside shading mobile tile set.”