Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Microsoft adds 165TB of sattelite pics to Bing Maps, makes it better than Google

Microsoft announced yesterday that they have added a total of 165 Terabytes worth of satellite images to their already solid 129TB stack on Bing Maps. This essentially increases the resolution of Bing Maps by 56%.

Of course, we all know that simply increasing the megapixel count doesn’t improve the picture quality, so it’s also interesting to see how Bing shows images on their maps compared to Google. Let’s take a look at our very own Burj Khalifa.

As you ca see that Google’s image has an isometric view, the long shadows lead us to believe the picture was taken during late afternoon/ early evening, which disorients the overall image a little. On the other hand Bing shows the aerial images pretty exactly as you would see them from the sky, and judging by the brightness of the sun and lack of shadows these images were taken almost exactly at noon, thus giving a more richer and brightly lit representation of the area.

Another thing to emphasize the higher resolution is the additional level of zoom afforded by Bing compared to Google, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a clearer picture.

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