Microsoft Corp. today announced U.S. availability of Virtual Earth� 3D, a new online mapping interface that is part of the Live Search offering, providing consumers with a three-dimensional experience to search, browse and explore the real world online.

When people visit Live Search (http://live.com), type a query into the search bar and click on the �maps� tab, they get their search results in a map context that offers the option to explore the area using two-dimensional views (aerial and bird�s-eye) or three dimensional models with Virtual Earth 3D. This new technology compiles photographic images of cities and terrain to generate textured, photorealistic 3-D models with engineering level accuracy.

�By helping people visualize information in far more useful and intuitive ways, Virtual Earth 3D takes search to an entirely new level,� said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. �The immersive 3-D experience provides a more powerful and engaging interface that delivers better experiences not only for consumers, but also for developers and advertisers.�

Three-dimensional models are available initially for 15 U.S. cities: San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth. Terrain imagery in 3-D is available globally, and Microsoft expects to offer 3-D imagery in an ever expanding set of cities. Other features provided by Live Search include access to real-time traffic information in select major U.S. cities, and access to business listings �yellow pages� and people listings �white pages� that allows consumers to easily find local information and act on it.

Also available:

• Channel 9: Duncan Lawler - Virtual Earth 3D: What. How. Why.
  
  Virtual Earth is now in 3D! Here, we chat with Duncan Lawler, Development Manager on the Virtual Earth team. His team of sharpshooter developers have written a fully managed API that will render any type of mapping coordinate data into 3-D space. You can program against a scriptable API or you can write create applications on top of the VE3-D platform from any managed language in VS 2005. Very cool stuff... Tune in.