MSN Arms Itself with Bing Maps, Silverlight, and Photosynth for the Battle of Britain

MSN has armed itself with a range of its own technologies, including Bing Maps, Silverlight and Photosynth, for the Battle of Britain, an interactive Cloud-based guide designed to allow users to get comprehensive insight into the air campaign waged by Luftwaffe against the United Kingdom in the second half of 1940.

According to Microsoft, MSN partnered with Shoothill for the creation of the impressive overview of the Battle of Britain, which is now live and available to users.

There are no less than three parts to the Battle of Britain guide, each based on a different technology: TimeMap, the Archive, and the Hangar.

“The TimeMap is based on Bing Maps Silverlight Control. It shows original maps, reconnaissance imagery and target documents of the German Luftwaffe,” revealed a member of the Bing team.

“You can navigate to various locations through quick links in a target list for London and Coventry."

“The TimeScope can be dragged around to explore the location; the TimeSlider lets you switch between various historic maps and satellite imagery and the Docs-button allows you to explore DeepZoom-Compositions of the original target documents within the TimeScope.”

Silverlight is an essential part of the application, and users will need to install the technology from Microsoft ahead of anything else.

It’s Silverlight which will allow users to take advantage of Deep Zoom in order to essentially zoom into the content available, be it photos or documents.

Silverlight is also connected to Bing Maps, and to feast your eyes on the synths featuring RAF aircraft.

“The Archive is a DeepZoom Composition with historic documents and photos. As usual Shoothill has created this composition as a huge mosaic,” the Bing team member added.

“Zoom closer to explore the secrets not only of the mosaic itself but also of once top secret documents."

“[And] the Photosynth "Hangar" contains Photosynth-Collections of the Heinkel He 111, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane in the RAF Museum in London.”