14 DAY TRIAL // Bing Maps is not as widely used as some other mapping services, such as Google Maps, for example, but Microsoft’s still investing a lot of resources and work into its own service, so new features arrive on a regular basis.
Today, for instance, the company has introduced traffic camera support for Bing Maps, making it possible to watch real-time footage from cameras across 11 countries. Microsoft hasn’t specifically mentioned which are these 11 countries, but the United States is definitely among them.
To view real-time cameras on Bing Maps, click the Traffic button to see the traffic layer and zoom in until you see a small camera icon on the map. There’s an option that displays the recently viewed cameras, so you can always go back to one that you’ve previously loaded.
Easy way to avoid traffic jams
“Integrating the Clearflow traffic prediction algorithm was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we are showing traffic cameras. Can you believe this all started as a data-driven experiment? Neither can we, however, this is just part of the innovative culture we embrace at Bing Maps,” the Bing team says in a post.
Basically, such a feature creates plenty of opportunities, and Microsoft hints that real-time traffic camera support can help you avoid traffic jams across your country. Obviously, there are better ways to do that, such as Google’s very own Waze mobile app, but the more solutions to avoid traffic jams, the better.
Certainly, Bing Maps can only get better, and such improvements make it a stronger rival to Google Maps, but there’s clearly a long way to go until Microsoft actually manages to compete against the search company on this side of the market. And yet, Bing Maps is still a pretty neat service, so make sure you give a try to the real-time traffic camera service next time you load it.