Figure 1: San Francisco skyline in Virtual Earth 3D beta. Click the image for more screenshots or look at a finer screenshot. Or try some Boston or L.A. or North America. Or compare Google and Microsoft products' realization of Las Vegas: do you really think that Virtual Earth is not a threat to Google Earth?
You may guess Microsoft Earth. But it would be wrong. First of all, such a name wouldn't be terribly original. Second of all, it is not honest because the Earth on your screen is similar to the real one but it is not quite identical. A more honest name is
- Virtual Earth 3D
Go to maps.live.com and in the left sidebar, you will find buttons to install this set of utilities that will allow you to view a caricature of the real world whose number of dimensions is closer to the actual one, namely ten, than the most common images were imagining. A fast computer with a good graphics card, Windows XP, and Internet Explorer 7 is recommended.
If you want to see e.g. the blackboards in the IAS to determine what they're thinking about, you need at least 512 GB of RAM. Good luck. ;-)
Microsoft also allows you to see any point in the streets of Seattle or San Francisco from the pedestrian's or race car perspective.
