Virtual Earth 3D Beta1 –vs- Google Earth head to head! You won’t believe what you see…

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I recently went on a dirtbiking trip with my new Garmin GPS and was really impressed by Google Earth. I was able to load my tracks and waypoints from MapSource directly into Google Earth and view the tracks and surrounding scenery in 3D… Wow!

 

Yesterday, Microsoft released the Beta1 Virtual Earth 3D components, and I could not believe what I saw! The level of detail in 3D when zoomed in was nothing short of AMAZING! Check out the following 3 pictures of the area I was riding north of Lake Chelan:

 

Actual photo:

 

Virtual Earth 3D view of this spot:

 

Google Earth 3D view of this spot:

 

As you can see the Virtual Earth view is way higher quality than the Google Earth view… it almost looks like the actual picture! Now if I could just find a way to run virtual earth as a client and import my GPS files… that’s what I’m looking for.