Microsoft subsequently referred to this product officially as " Live Search Maps", integrating it as part of its Live Search services. NET managed control and managed interfaces to Direct3D. On November 6, 2006, Microsoft added the ability to view the maps in 3D using a. In December 2005, Virtual Earth was replaced by Windows Live Local, featuring improvements, technologies from Pictometry International, and integrated with the Local Search index on Windows Live Search. The original version lacked many of its distinguishing features, including birds' eye view and 3D maps, and the Collections functionality was limited to a single "Scratchpad" of points of interest. Its original stand out feature was the aerial imagery. It was a continuation of previous Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft MapPoint and TerraServer. Even though we loved most aspects of this program, its lack of direction makes it hard to recommend.Windows Live Local Beta, showing aerial imageryīing Maps was originally launched as MSN Virtual Earth, which was released for beta testing on July 24, 2005. But this wasn't enough to rescue this program from its unfortunate lack of direction.Įarthquake 3D is a freeware program. On a more interesting note, the program did have a feature that updated the globe with the newest quakes. After several fruitless minutes we grew frustrated and gave up. We learned with ease how to rotate the globe using our mouse, but could not get a closer look, even though it's the first thing the description promised. This all functioned great, but zooming in was impossible. We appreciated how the control panel let us filter quakes by severity and changed the globe's look to better see the quakes.
The program itself was a spinning globe with magnitudes and the traditional multiring circles indicating earthquakes. The controls all looked basic, but soon we discovered that the Help file didn't do more than give a description of the product, and some actions we wanted to perform were not intuitive enough. We were initially impressed with the interface. While the program provides a great deal of information and options, it suffers from its complete lack of direction. Earthquake 3D provides a fascinating look at recent seismic activity around the globe.
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