Windows Experience Blog : Virtual Earth

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 Released

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:10:00 GMT

I caught this via Nic over at Channel 10 today – a new version of Microsoft Pro Photo Tools has been released: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2.

Download: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2

The first thing I want to mention in regards to what’s new with Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 is something I think many readers here will find as very good news: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 now has support for 64-bit Windows Vista.

Here’s what else is new with Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2:

Support for reading & writing XMP side car metadata enabling interoperability with Adobe products.
Viewing actual RAW images, in addition to thumbnails
Conversion of RAW files to JPEG, TIFF, and HD Photo using “As Shot” camera settings.
The ability to resize RAW images.
Support for geotagging international locales
Improved functionality for geotagging images.

And the features from the previous version of Microsoft Pro Photo Tools is there there too including the use of Virtual Earth 3D for 3D renderings of a image’s location.

For more details, check out the team’s post on the Microsoft Professional Photography Blog.

Browse the Sky with WorldWide Telescope from Microsoft Research

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:43:00 GMT

Want to try out for yourself what made Robert Scoble cry? Tonight, Microsoft Research has made available the Spring Beta of WorldWide Telescope.

Download: WorldWide Telescope Spring Release

WorldWide Telescope is an application designed to turn your PC into a "virtual telescope" by stitching together terabytes (soon to be petabytes) of high-resolution images of the universe. Massive amounts of data are generated by the various scientific and research facilities and WorldWide Telescope brings the catalog of that data together for anyone to access using the power of the Internet. This new application is particularly exciting for me being someone really heavy into astronomy. You can also use WorldWide Telescope and connect an ASCOM-capable Telescope to your PC to watch the night sky.

WorldWide Telescope lets me connect to Communities, access Collections of celestial objects such as the Solar System or Constellations, or take Guides Tours.

Using my mouse, I can navigate the cosmos zooming in and out to any object in the rich catalog of celestial objects. I can right-click to access quick information on any celestial object.

I can use WorldWide Telescope for 4 different "looks" - Panorama, Sky, Earth, or Planets. By default you are looking into the Sky when WorldWide Telescope but you can change the "look" in the lower left-hand corner of the application. You can view planets of the Solar System in 3D or view a panoramic shot as if you were standing on Mars (my favorite view so far!) taken from one of the NASA's Opportunity and Spirit rover missions.

I can also use WorldWide Telescope to browse the Earth using Virtual Earth.

WorldWide Telescope also lets you copy a view to your clipboard. In browsing the universe tonight with WorldWide Telescope I spotted several of these weird reflection-like images that I'm not entirely sure what they are:

Looks like a reflection from the telescope (or device) that took the image but I'm no expert.

By default, WorldWide Telescope is configured to view the night sky as if you were standing at Microsoft Building 99 in Redmond. But you can change your Observing Location very easily via View options.

WorldWide Telescope observes the night sky in real-time (which is awesome) however there are controls that let you move backward or forward as well as pausing at any given moment.

There are so many features in WorldWide Telescope that it would be hard for me to go through them all tonight in this post. Give WorldWide Telescope a try yourself and let me know what you think. And if anyone has any suggestions for ASCOM-capable Telescopes I might go out and buy that might work with WorldWide Telescope - let me know!

26 Terabytes Published to Virtual Earth – Biggest Update Yet

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 07:41:00 GMT

Today the Virtual Earth Team announced they successfully published their biggest update to the Virtual Earth platform yet - running at 26 terabytes! That is quite a bit of data to publish to the web. This update brings expanded aerial imagery and textured 3D buildings/cityscapes to new cities (full list on the Virtual Earth Team's blog).

It also brings a new feature to Virtual Earth which also powers Live Search Maps: "hill shades". The hill shading feature allows the user viewing a road-style map to convey elevation on the maps.

The above screenshot is of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State on Live Search Maps. You can see the shading effects allow you to get an idea of elevation. Hill shading is the term the Virtual Earth Team is using but I'm not entirely sure if that is the official name for this feature.

I've relied heavily on Live Search Maps most of this year during my travels and also when I drive up to Redmond from Portland. I continue to use Live Search Maps for most of my mapping needs.