This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft parts clouds over Bing Maps with massive sat pic upgrade

Adds ocean floor detail too

Microsoft has jazzed up Bing Maps with an extra 13 million square kilometers of high-res satellite shots and ocean floor imagery.

Oahu, Hawaii before and after Maps update

Oahu, Hawaii before and after Maps update

Ballmer and co have sourced data about the ocean's bathymetry - the underwater equivalent of topography - from Scripps Institution of Oceanography as well as new “straight down” photos taken from aircraft or satellite.

The satellite pictures have a resolution of 15 metres per pixel and will be stuffed into Bing Maps and the Windows 8 Maps app.

“Our new base satellite layer is analyzed and processed to provide views with reduced cloud cover in areas notorious for persistent cloud cover such as high latitude and equatorial regions. More detail is now visible in these once problematic areas,” the firm explained on the Bing Maps blog. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like