Bing Maps, Microsoft’s answer to Google’s omnipresent mapping platform, has today received a whopping 165 terabytes (TB) of new satellite imagery – its single biggest release to date. In fact, the latest release is more than its entire history of data combined.
The latest aerial release includes new satellite imagery as well as global ortho photography, totaling 165TB in total – prior to this, it had released only 129TB worth of satellite imagery.
Microsoft officially rebranded Live Search Maps as Bing Maps back in 2009, with the final stable version hitting the public realm in December 2010. This latest roll-out features imagery covering the Americas, Africa, Australia, Europe and Asia, and encompasses almost 38 million square kilometers.
Visit Bing Maps World Tour App to view the full coverage, and to see the June Global Ortho release in the app, click on the “Select Releases” tab and choose the “”Aerial – GlobalOrtho Jun. 2012 release.”
Microsoft says that as of today, its Global Ortho project is 85% acquired and published. “Just this month, Bing Imagery Technologies hit a significant milestone by completing 100% of aerial photography over the United States,” the companys says. “The photography in Europe is slated to be finished by this fall and all updated imagery should be published by the end of 2012.”
Microsoft recently announced a deeper tie-up with Nokia, with the Finnish mobile behemoth powering the traffic feature in Bing Maps, and geocoding data would be integrated too. And last week we reported that Microsoft was switching from Bing to Nokia Maps in Windows Phone 8, for turn-by-turn directions and offline access.
Here’s a choice selection of some of the new imagery from Bing Maps’ latest release…
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