Visual Earth from Microsoft

How do you access Microsoft Visual Earth? Google Earth is an easy download, but I have not been able to find a similar access procedure for Microsoft Visual Earth.

I use it all the time as a back up for my c330. I Evan take a photo of the customers home. The photos are so good it blows then away.
jolleyr c330

"How do you access Microsoft Visual Earth? Google Earth is an easy download, but I have not been able to find a similar access procedure for Microsoft Visual Earth."

Is this the Link ?

http://maps.live.com/

Click on the 3d view on the link you have listed and it will direct you to the download.

I'm a recent convert to MS Visual Earth. Not only do the satellite pictures usually have higher resolution than Google Earth, MS VE has a crisp "bird's eye" view for most locations in metro areas. That lets you view locations at an angle, so you can confirm that you have actually found the location you were looking for.

I'm also able to strip out the long/lat for each location (via a Word macro), and paste the coordinates into a spreadsheet. It has made it f-a-r easier and faster to create POIs. I love it.

I should mention that, when I used my daughter's Mac to access the maps.live.com site, I didn't get the same tool I get on my own PC. Instead, I got a yellow-pages-like local search page for local businesses.

Sorry but it is a window vista may be evan a xp program but not a maaaaack. So Sorrry
jolleyr c550

I can see that I wasn't mistaken that VE is better than G E. Google doesn't even show my 3 year old house on the map of my street. VE has it and up to date. I'm looking forward to my son completing the automated Excel program for obtaining multiple locations and saving them in an Excel spreadsheet.

I sure hope you let us have a copy of the program.I have used Virtual Earth in the past for other then the Gps and liked it.Google maps had more options for the gps but it sounds like the program that your Son is working on will close that gap in some areas.

My son plans to post the program on POI-Factory as soon as he gets the bugs worked out. He goes by BrianL so stay tuned. I think we all will benefit from his programming work.

Any noticed how many resources this program uses? I have an older PC.

WOW! The photos of my house are so much better on this program! It gets a lot closer to the house for a better view.

How can you tell how recent the photos are? Is there a date when the photos were taken that I am not seeing?

Ray

Looking at our house and landscaping the maps are about 2 years old. They are higher resolution than the Google map which is the same age.

No, but I can tell you it is much better behaved on my machine that Google Earth. GE always (and I mean, always) locks my machine eventually.

That is my estimate, as well.

How do you strip out the lat/long? I am looking for an easy way to that. Thx.

>>How do you strip out the lat/long?<<

It doesn't work any more!

Bascially, I copied the position's URL into a Word doc, and used a macro I created to pull the long/lat out of the URL.

Just now tried it, so I could give you step-by-step instructions. But MS Virtual Earth positions won't copy to my clipboard tonight. I'll give it a shot tomorrow night, and see if I can figure out a workaround.

I know how old they are by the stage of work done on my house. Right now the last photo is about 9 Mo's old
jolleyr c550

It doesn't seem to clear if I zoom in close. Is there something I am doing wrong? Now from afar, it is great.
Maybe I haven't learned how to use it. It is really fuzzy when I try to get close to some things.

I cannot find MS Visual Earth.

Is it the same program as the MS Virtual Earth, or a different software program ?

Thanks, Tim

How much is Visual Earth?

I am also looking forward to your son's progress. It sounds very promising.

Gage

Just checked Visual Earth, has a nice picture of a car in the driveway I have not owned in 7 over years.

1. MSVE is free.
2. I want to Google I love Google you can fine all most anything.
3. I looks like the photos very in age 9mo's, 2 yrs to 7 years.
4. if you look on the right side you will see the Lat, Log for that spot.
5. You can zoom down and see the lovely girl sunning her self in the back yard. But you cannot read her tag.
6. I have seen 3 photos on my house on MSVE oldest was 4 to 5 yrs, 2 to 3 yrs and about 9 mos.
I hope this helps a little

jolleyr c550

>>How do you strip out the lat/long?<<

I'm back. I figured out why this didn't work last night. It was a new dialog box that is described in Step 4, below. All is working again.

Here's how you do it:

1. On the MS Virtual Earth (MS VE) satellite image, right-click the object/location for which you want long/lat.

2. On the resulting drop-down menu, select "Center map here."

3. At the upper right part of the screen, click the word "Share."

4. On the resulting drop-down menu, select "Copy to clipboard." The first time you do this during an MS VE session, the following dialog box will appear:

"Do you want to allow this webpage to access your Clipboard? If you allow this, the webpage can access the Clipboard and read information that you've cut or copied recently."

If you click the "Allow access" button, location data from the image will copy to your Clipboard. If, however, you click the "Don't allow" button, you will NOT be able to copy the MS VE location data to your Clipboard. (There is a workaround. It requires an extra step, though. Let me know if you want to persue it.)

5. Assuming that you allowed the MS VE location data to be copyied to your Clipboard, paste that into a Word document. You'll get text that reads something like this:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.748305~-73.98590...

In that example, the latitude of the POI is 40.748305 degrees, and the longitude is -73.985909 degrees.

So how do you strip that data out of the location data you just pasted into Word?

At this point I use a macro that I created in Word. Continuing with the same example, running the macro would yield this text:

-73.985909 40.748305

I use a tab to separate the longitude and latitude, because I use Excel to build the raw data that I use to create csv files; the tab delimiter makes it easy to paste the long & lat into my Excel file. You could just as easily, however, program your macro to separate the longitude and latitude with a comma.

I wish I knew how to transmit a macro. I don't. Basically, though, this is the process you follow while recording the macro:

1. Using Word's Replace command, find the character string "http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=" and replace it with nothing. That, in effect, deletes the first 41 characters before the latitude.
2. Again using Word's Replace command, find the the character string "&style" and replace it with nothing. That action puts your cursor immediately to the right of the longitude.
3. While holding down the Shift and Ctrl keys, press the End key. That action selects all the text after the longitude.
4. Press the Delete key to delete the selected text.
5. Using Word's Find command, find the "~" (aka "squiggle" character). Press the Delete key to delete it. That puts your cursor smack between the latitude and the longitude.
6. Hold down the Shift key and press the End key. WHILE CONTINUING TO HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY. press the left-arrow key, so that the selected text omits the paragraph symbol at the end of the line. You can now let go of the Shift key. This step selects the longitude, whatever its length.
7. While holding down the Ctrl key, press the X key to cut the longitude.
8. Press the Home key to put your cursor at the beginning of the line.
9. While holding down the Ctrl key, press the V key to paste the longitude to the beginning of the line.
10. Press the Tab key (or, if you prefer, the comma key) to separate the longitude from the latitude.
11. End the macro recording.

Good luck recording your macro successfully. Using MS Virtual Earth this way has made my POI creation so much easier, faster, pleasant and accurate. Sometimes I still have to use the others. But my preferred tool is MS VE, no question.

Thanks! I didn't know that about copying to the clipboard.

>>I use a tab to separate the longitude and latitude, because I use Excel to build the raw data that I use to create csv files; the tab delimiter makes it easy to paste the long & lat into my Excel file.<<

I am fairly handy writing Excel code - I'll look into writing a custom function to extract the data so Word can be bypassed.

Okay, here is the down-and-dirty code to extract the position data using CaseyGuy's technique. No error checking is done. Some familiarity with Excel VBA is necessary.

In the Visual Basic editor, copy and paste the two functions below into a module in your "PERSONAL.XLS" macro sheet. (Using PERSONAL.XLS is necessary to make the functions available for any new or existing workbook.)

Usage: Copy the position data in Virtual Earth to the clipboard using the steps outlined by CaseyGuy. Paste into cell A1 (for example). In the cell where you want latitude, enter the formula "=personal.xls!latitude(A1)", and similarly for longitude "=personal.xls!longitude(A1)".

The results of the functions are converted to values when the workbook is saved in csv format.

===============================================
'Example VisualEarth text
' http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=30.036884~-95.38151...
'
Function Latitude(ve_text As Variant) As Double
Dim loc1 As Integer, loc2 As Integer, loc3 As Integer
loc1 = InStr(1, ve_text, "cp=")
loc2 = InStr(loc1, ve_text, "~")
loc3 = InStr(loc2, ve_text, "&")
Latitude = CDbl(Mid(ve_text, loc1 + 3, loc2 - loc1 - 3))
End Function

Function Longitude(ve_text As Variant) As Double
Dim loc1 As Integer, loc2 As Integer, loc3 As Integer
loc1 = InStr(1, ve_text, "cp=")
loc2 = InStr(loc1, ve_text, "~")
loc3 = InStr(loc2, ve_text, "&")
Longitude = CDbl(Mid(ve_text, loc2 + 1, loc3 - loc2 - 1))
End Function

Thanks, ajf1958. I'll try that this weekend.

I cannot even figure out to make a poi file. I will never figure this out. WOW that is major good work.
jolleyr c550 from the left coast land of nuts.daaaa

Follow the steps outlined by CaseyGuy...

For this example, assume that the Excel output will be saved as a Garmin CSV file (column order is longitude, latitude, name, comment)

Copy/paste the Virtual Earth clipboard data into cell E1

In cell A1 (longitude) enter the formula
=MID(E1,FIND("~",E1)+1,FIND("&style",E1)-FIND("~",E1)-1)

In cell B1 (latitude) enter the formula
=MID(E1,FIND("&cp=",E1)+4,FIND("~",E1)-FIND("&cp=",E1)-4)

In cell C1, enter a name for the location.

To enter additional locations, paste the Virtual Earth data in the fifth column of the next row (e.g. E2),then copy the first two cells in the row above (e.g. A1 to A2, B1 to B2). Repeat as needed.

Visual Earth is an Internet program and you can access it at this url http://home.live.com/?mkt=en-us.

Please be patient. I also am waiting for the program. My son is away on business to the Panama Canal and I suspect he won't get to the program until he returns.

will this Visual Earth work or is it compatiable with the Garmin C530?

Maybe in general, but the Visual Earth view of my house does not show the house next door, which has been there for at least 4 years. Google Earth does show it. So "up to date" may vary depending on the location.

Yep. That is much simpler than vba. Your MID function is nearly identical to mine. The benefit of your way is that, as you said, no vba is needed. Thanks.

wow thanks for pointing out Visual Earth. I spent all afternoon exploring it. I like how the White House and Congress are blurred out in birds eye view.

Shanghai china is filled with smog, you can barely see much. Beijing is just as bad.

London is the only non-us city I found with birds eye. Anyone know of other non-US cities with birds eye?

Was testing if MSVE would do driving directions. Once I generated the driving directions I noticed some additional options for driving directions:

- shortest time
- shortest distance
These can be combined with a check box to select "Choose route based on traffic".

I'm not sure how effective the route based on traffic is... but I thought these features were neat. I hope to see them on Google Maps too - I use Google a lot and would prefer not to switch to MSVE.

MSVE also has a send to GPS - if the GPS has MSN Direct service.

Put your home address in and check it out to see if you can get the birds eye view.

I have the same problem. It's clear while moving but one it stops, a fog covers the viewing area.

Thanks for the link to Microsoft Visual Earth.
JeffSh

I keep getting an "Internet Explorer" error and it closes. I'm sure it's something about my configuration, not the program. Sounds like a good program.

thanks for the info and links. I'm am also looking foward to moving to north carolina in a few years maybe sooner new jersey's taxes is killing me.