Windows Live Local launches: 45-degree view not especially useful

by Jordan Running Dec 8th 2005

Yesterday when I mentioned Windows Live Local I was pretty excited about the 45-degree bird's-eye view feature. To us humans, a 45-degree view of a city is much more useful than an almost-90-degree satellite view, simply because we're much more used to looking at the sides of buildings rather than their roofs. Live Local, which launched in beta today as promised, has such views of 12 American cities (notably missing is Chicago), which are beautiful high-res images better than any other mapping service is offering right now, but for a couple reasons they're not nearly as useful as they could be.

First of all, the photos edges' aren't seamlessly connected. You can use the mouse to drag yourself around individual parts (between ten and twenty blocks on an edge, in my estimation) of a city, but when you get to the edge of that part you have to click to move to the next section. I'm sure this is for technical reasons, but the effect is jarring and disorienting and makes the whole experience feel like the old MapQuest days. Secondly, Live Local can show driving directions with 45-degree views, but it will only do so with a series of points; it doesn't connect the points with lines, making it impossible to follow your route on-screen and check out the landmarks along the way. I can't imagine anyone using Windows Live Local wouldn't just switch back to the ordinary map or satellite view when getting driving directions.

All in all, Windows Live Local does add some nice features (and even works in Firefox, albeit slowly), but Microsoft's big selling point, the 45-degree bird's eye view, though fun to play and surf landmarks with, is little more than a gimmick.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

hafa said 6:01PM on 12-08-2005

good try microsoft, but its still not half as good as google earth

Randy said 6:12PM on 12-08-2005

I don't know about it being a gimmick. This of it this way: landmarks. Instead of just having a "turn onto blah blah blah" you can add what the view will look like with the bird's eye. And you can rotate the 45 degree angle through the four directional points, so it can be rather specific.

I also don't know how practical it would be to tool around an entire area at the 45 degree angle... I found I could narrow into certain points with it which seemed better than scrolling over an entire city, but that's just my opinion.

I do think it's worth more than just a gimmick, though.

Tim Trimble said 7:30PM on 12-08-2005

I posted the following comment earlier today. But, for some reason the original article was changed and my comment disappeared. Is this site afraid of MS critical commentary? Humm. Here's the original comment:

It seems like too little, too late! Google Earth provides all the mentioned functionality and more. Plus, it's been around long enough to be a mature product - rather than one that MS pushes to the public for beta testing. Though Google always flags their releases as beta. I checked out MS Live and I was very disappointed in what was being offered. If MS really wants to make an impact and be competitive in this area of the internet then they need to provide a fully functional tool instead of offering a couple little pieces for the purpose of announcing that they have a new service. It's the same old marketing ploy - release a service/product with the intent of scaring the competition away. But the service/product is usually substandard to what is already out there. I think they're finding that this ploy no longer works the way it used to. The one exception that I've seen to this is MS's release of the Visual Studio Express (Very Impressive!). Maybe the Live group needs to communicate with the VS group and get some ideas on how it should be done, eh?

Timothy Trimble
The ART of Software Development

Jordan Running said 7:57PM on 12-08-2005

Er, Tim, your previous comment was in reply to a different post. It's still there:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/12/07/windows-live-local-to-offer-45-degree-birds-eye-landscapes/#c128157

Samuel said 8:21PM on 12-08-2005

For your information DS your full of it, the 45deg feature is excellent! Alright, alright it is US only (oh didn't you notice), I personally think a snipped of all majour capitals should have been woven in for the launch. Any yes the absence of PolyLines is dissapointing (in this BETA don't forget).

I would also like to zoom in more, I did not notice any broken edges and am using FF. I would like the rotation to be flash like, smooth in other words and I feel compared to GMaps the interface is too much and too clunky, needs to be more streamlined.

Still best of luck to them, and 45deg is awesome full stop!

Tim Trimble said 8:53PM on 12-08-2005

My apologies. I came back to see if it posted and didn't see it, but I saw this new one on basically the same topic. I assumed the worse. Sorry.

Tim

MPOE said 4:44AM on 12-09-2005

If you want du see a realy cool map. Visit http://www.map24.de (3D view)

Tony said 8:36AM on 12-10-2005

I don't think they'll ever be able to stitch the pictures together. These pictures are taken by airplanes, not satellites. Satellites take their pictures from the same point of view, so the perspective in each picture doesn't change. Planes are moving constantly, though.

To see the problem, compare the overlapping portions of two different pictures, or try to stitch them together yourself.

Anyway, I totally agree that it's cool but not useful for navigation in it's current state. I think the long term plan is NOT to use these images directly, but to build 3-D maps of cities and use the information in the images to color in the sides of buildings. In the meantime, MS is letting us use their millions of dollars in aerial photography as a toy. I got a great aerial shot of my house for free--something that would have cost a lot of money otherwise.

Foo said 5:19PM on 12-15-2005

But do you know what it's good for?

I'm in D?ldorf, Germany, right know ... and I've got a wonderful view on the Statue of Liberty ... Really great!

Of course Google Earth is great, but the pictures are pretty bad sometimes. And those Bird-Eye-Pics aren't. I like it, even if it's no match for Gearth ...

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