gotta love Google for all the great "free" content as their maps. so many people are afraid that this technology can harm them but this technology is actually very old. most of these sats used are from the early '90's era. satellite imagery which can take angled topography is now in use by the military and i imagine to see them offered free in the next 10 years.

pacificdave: I believe you may be talking about images like this: http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.689258~-74.045148&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1915335

I thought Google's 2 more levels were to compete with Microsoft's maps, but as you can see they're still not nearly as high res. Though it may also depend on what areas you're looking at.

I also meant to mention, Microsoft only has the "bird's eye view" option in very limited areas currently.

well, not actually. i know about MS's bird's eye view aerial photography but what i was talking about was angled satellite imagery.

Ok, after rereading your original post I think I see what you mean. Google has this feature in Google Earth (I can't remember exactly where, but some mountainous regions in the US as well as I believe the Grand Canyon were mapped in 3D). It'll be cool when they expand it to include all areas.

3D mapping in Google Earth is already everywhere, just not at high enough resolution to see buildings.

Okay, so I wasn't just smoking crack like two weeks ago:

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/16181.html#id16181

It is nice that they did this, I didn't like having to go to Terraserver/Virtual Earth/Windows Live Local to get the higher resolution stuff. Downtown Seattle looks very nice, but my neighborhood (a couple of miles away) is just interpolated up.

Andrew