Microsoft's Virtual Earth and Brighton

Google Earth's main competitor today, Microsoft's Virtual Earth is a platform that serves as an integrated set of services that combines a unique bird's eye (seen in the pic below for the city in question), aerial, and 3D imagery with mapping, location and search functionality. You will be able to find more details about Virtual Earth's functionality and also other issues such as coverage etc. at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/default.mspx.

Speaking of coverage, it is, at the moment at least, definitely not as good as Google's application (for example only a handful of 3D UK cities are available at the moment). However, Virtual Earth seems to be somewhat more better-suited to 3D virtual city models because of the automatic modelling approach Microsoft seems to favour. Seeing that Microsoft's product is also newer it will be very interesting to see in the next year or so which application will be prevalent over the other.

Meanwhile I will continue to feature updates on Virtual Earth (of interest to 3D urban modelling mostly) but till then here is a YouTube flythrough vid of the 3D model of the city I live in (and one of the first two cities uploaded for it a couple of months ago), the seaside-located Brighton (the seaside adjective is definitely a bit ill-suited considering the awful weather we've had this summer but anyway!)...