Virtual Earth Beta

I talked about Microsoft's Virtual Earth a while ago when it was first announced, but today they launched the beta version of the site at http://virtualearth.msn.com/.

As expected, it only covers the USA in detail at the moment but these are my initial impressions:

Good Points

• You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out
• Using the compass allows for continuous scrolling.
• Search results refresh and update as you scroll around the map.
• Road details can be overlaid over the aerial photos.
• Double click to centre and zoom
• Can show multiple search results at once
• Bigger map than Google Maps
• Nice transparency effects on the overlays

Bad Points

• When you zoom out a bit the maps aren't as clear as Google's
• You cant do directions - selecting the 'drive to' or 'drive from' links just opens up the old msn maps
• Seems a bit harder to find locations, ie some searches that worked on Google don't work as well, but this may just be me.
• No UK data!

Overall I think its a very good start, and if they add in direction support and UK data it may beat Google Maps, but we'll just have to wait and see.

They are also plugging a locator feature that uses WiFi to accurately show your current location on the map. I have no idea how this works, or whether it is just a US only service as I don't have WiFi, but using the fallback IP address method just shows me England which isn't much help!

On a related note, Google Maps have recently added a hybrid mode, which overlays road data on top of the satellite images. This is similar to Virtual Earth's aerial photos with Labels, although I think I prefer VE's approach as it is a bit more subtle.