14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues to evolve the content of Virtual Earth, and the August update introduced to the service is an illustrative example in this context. Following on the path of older mammoth updates, the new content made available this month on Virtual Earth offers users new imagery across the United States and Europe. Chris Pendleton, Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Virtual Earth revealed that the Redmond company updated Virtual Earth with no less than 15.65 Terabytes worth of new content. This is by no means the first time that Microsoft breaks the milestone of double digit Terabytes updates to its online mapping service.
At the end of March 2007, Microsoft made available a 3.8 Terabytes update, but that was merely the state of what was about to come. In the first week of July, the Virtual Earth platform managed to grow with no less than 26 Terabytes of new imagery. But while Microsoft obviously outdid itself the previous month, the August release brings it down a notch, and is a cool 10 Terabytes smaller than the apex the company had to offer. Still, it is yet another step forward for Virtual Earth in the eyeball race against Google Earth.
One of the main aspects of the update are focused on Montreal, Canada and Toulouse, France. Both cities will from now own be available in three dimensions to users of Virtual Earth. Additionally, Microsoft has introduced a plethora of Bird's Eye imagery. Pendleton informed that cities across the following states have been updated: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
Outside the U.S., Microsoft also enriched the content for locations in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands and Greece. Yes, now the imagery for both Thessaloniki and Athens has been updated. Microsoft has a complete list of all the cities impacted by the update here.