BOULDERBing team finishes U.S. maps
Posted: Friday, August 31, 2012 12:00 am
The Boulder-based Microsoft team that handles images for Bing Maps wrapped up a two-year project this week that photographed the U.S. down to the foot.
The imagery — which only excludes Nevada’s so-called Area 51 and the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as required by the federal government — gives Internet search engine Bing the most detailed, up-to-date set of aerial photos.
"We’re the only mapping project that has done a complete aerial view of the U.S." at this resolution in this time frame, said Nathan Kling, business manager for the Boulder team.
To celebrate the milestone, Boulder artists this week drew a giant Bing logo on the top level of the city parking garage that sits adjacent to Microsoft's local office. On Wednesday, planes took a last round of aerial photos of Boulder to capture the image of the Bing logo in downtown.
The Bing team also partnered with DigitalGlobe in Longmont on the project.
The aerial imaging project goes back to 2006 when Microsoft acquired Boulder-based aerial camera designer Vexcel and set up a permanent presence in town, said Nathan Kling, business manager for Microsoft’s Boulder team.
In the years since, the Boulder team worked with partners in Austria to build on the Vexcel design, creating a high-resolution camera with a wider view. The Boulder team also created a tool that can be used to fix the distortion of pixels that occurs on the outside edges of wide-view pictures, making it appear that each pixel was captured by a camera directly overhead.