DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with VirtualEarth

Rebranding Microsoft Virtual Earth To "Bing Maps for Enterprise"

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:33:11 GMT

Microsoft Virtual Earth now has a new name (and it's not Kumo or Kiev). First, a little background to ensure we're all on the same page. As of yesterday.. Microsoft Virtual Earth is now called "Bing Maps for Enterprise."

Add a bit of 'Bing' to your silverlight maps

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:31:12 GMT

As you cannot have missed in the news recently Microsoft has re-branded its search offering to be called "Bing". This means Virtual Earth is now called Bing Maps for Enterprise. Yesterday Microsoft automatically updated the Ajax Virtual Earth control to use the new Bing logo and you may have wondered why the Silverlight map control was not also updated? The reason is that the logo is a resource in the Silverlight control assembly and is not pointing to an external file. So does that mean we have to wait for a new release of the Bing Silverlight map control before the logo will get changed? Well yes and no, if you want it to be automatically changed you will have to wait for the next release but there is nothing stopping you changing it yourself now by following the steps below.

Best Practices for Virtual Earth development (AJAX control)

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:42:42 GMT

Best Practices for Virtual Earth development (AJAX control). Great posts in the forum I thought i would share here.

Virtual Earth Webservices

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:11:16 GMT

Great Start to Getting your Virtual Earth webservice On

Prototype of VEToolkit + ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Component Checked In

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:25:55 GMT

I just checked in an initial prototype of a reusable Virtual Earth component for ASP.NET MVC. The "VEToolkit.Web.MVC.Map" component is written as an Extension to the ASP.NET MVC AjaxHelper class, and allows for a simpler experience when implementing Virtual Earth mapping within ASP.NET MVC applications. This is an early prototype of what the component will be; it's not a final release; but you are free to use it.

Getting Started with Web.Maps.VE v2.0 - Display a Virtual Earth Map on

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:44:48 GMT

In this article we will go over the basics of implementing MS Virtual Earth mapping capabilities in ASP.NET 3.5 Web Applications using the Web.Maps.VE v2.0 ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping Server Control. This article also shows code examples in C#, but this are exactly the same if you are using VB.NET.

Web.Maps.VE v2.0 - Basics of the Click Event

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:44:07 GMT

The Web.Maps.VE v2.0 ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping control Raises a few of the Client-Side Virtual Earth Events up to Server-Side ASP.NET Code. One of these events is the Map.Click Event. The Map.Click Event gets raised each time the user clicks on the Map using the Mouse. This tutorial is going to give you an overview of how to handle the Map.Click event, and use it to add/remove pushpins, re-center the map and change the map zoom level.

Web.Maps.VE v2.0 - Using the MiniMapExtender

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:43:19 GMT

The Web.Maps.VE v2.0 ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping Control comes with a couple of extender controls. These are additional controls contained within the controls Dll that basically add/extend the main Map control with additional functionality that's not built-in. This tutorial is going to give you an overview of how to use the MiniMapExtender control to easily add a Mini Map to your Maps.

How to Build a Virtual Earth 3D Flight Simulator Series

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:35:22 GMT

The Virtual Earth 3D control is a great tool when you not only want to know where some place is in the world, but also want to know what it looks like. This is particularly useful when traveling to new areas as landmarks can be easily identified ahead of time. Recently Microsoft release documentation on how to develop against this 3D API (http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth3d/archive/2009/01/25/documentation.aspx). Infusion development has been working with Virtual Earth 3D for well over a year now developing business applications. Most of these applications have been developed for the Microsoft Surface. One thing I've noticed is that there hasn't been a lot of development against the 3D API yet outside of the business world. This article is going to show you how to create a simple flight simulator plug-in for Virtual Earth. Here is a screen shot of the finished product to get you motivated to read through this article. You can also download the source code for this here:

Overlay OpenStreetMap and Yahoo Maps Imagery using Custom Tile Layers!

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:12:26 GMT

In the "Virtual Earth Silverlight: Using Tile Layers to Overlay Custom Map Imagery" article I showed you how to overlay your own Custom Map Imagery that you generated using the MapCruncher tool on top of the Map. Now, in this article I'll show you what you need to know in order to overlay map imagery from other competing mapping services (OpenStreetMap, OpenAerialMap and Yahoo Maps). This allows you to easily build in functionality that allows your users to easily switch (with the click of a button or selection of a dropdown) which mapping service imagery is used to visualize the data in your application.

Getting Started with Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control SDK CTP

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:10:02 GMT

It seems like forever since MIX'08 when a demo was shown of a new Silverlight-based Virtual Earth Map Control. Well, now FINALLY we actually have a version of the control to "play" around with. The reason I say "play" is because it's still a CTP (Community Technology Preview). If you read the license file you'll see that basically the most important points of Microsoft's position on CTP's are: 1) You can NOT use it in a production environment, and 2) It's a Preview, so anything can change from now until the next release (CTP, Beta, whatever). Well, anyway. I introduce you to the Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control SDK CTP! Before I dig into what's needed to begin development, and show you how simple it is to use; here's a few highlights of what's so Awesome about the control.

Virtual Earth Silverlight Control CTP Teaser and Some Initial Thoughts

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:18:49 GMT

Yesterday, the Virtual Earth Silverlight Control CTP (Community Technology Preview) was announced at MIX'09. I was also fortunate to get early access to the CTP, so I've been playing with it for a few days. I can't show you any code yet (until it's released publicly), but I can tell you a little about it for now. Once it's released I'll be posting some articles that range from Basic How-To to Implementing Some Cool Stuff; but you'll have to wait a little bit for those.

VEToolkit - Virtual Earth Toolkit v6.2.012509.1053 Released!

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:04:36 GMT

This is the first official release of the Virtual Earth Toolkit. The Virtual Earth Toolkit is a set of JavaScript-based Controls/Tools that Extend Virtual Earth with functionality that is commonly implemented, but hasn't been implemented within the Virtual Earth JavaScript Map Control. The Controls/Tools in the VEToolkit library are completely self contained, and don't require the use of any other JavaScript library to use other than Virtual Earth 6.2 (current version). This allows you to use this toolkit along-side any other JavaScript library (jQuery, ASP.NET AJAX, etc.); plus you can make use of it with any server-side framework of you choice (ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, PHP, etc.).

VEToolkit: Virtual Earth Toolkit Open Source Project

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:46:04 GMT

A couple weeks ago I started the new VEToolkit (Virtual Earth Toolkit) Open Source project. This project spawns out of the need for more helpers to make Virtual Earth Map development much simpler, and follows inspiration from the Ajax Control Toolkit. This is a JavaScript library, so it's all client-side code; just like the Virtual Earth AJAX API itself. The project is also meant to play nicely with any client-side, JavaScript library you want to use within your application (such as jQuery, Prototype, etc.)

Load Virtual Earth on Demand

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:21:36 GMT

The Virtual Earth JavaScript control is not small weighing in at 217KB when compressed in Version 6.2. When you require the rich experience of Virtual Earth this size is not an issue, the control is aimed at broadband users and within a few moments of interacting with the map you can easy exceed this with the rich imagery being loaded on demand. But what if your web page only needs to show the Virtual Earth map when a user asks for it or you just want your page to load super fast? You need to load Virtual Earth on demand.

Virtual Earth Concepts - Dynamically Draw Polyline

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:42:24 GMT

In this example we will look at the functionality needed to dynamically draw a polyline on the map. In the example to the right, functionality has been added so that you can dynamically draw a polyline on the displayed map. At the bottom of the map there is a button that needs to be clicked to start the process.

RELEASED: Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper for 6.2

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:45:37 GMT

I am happy to announce that we have an updated version of the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper that is in sync with the update Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2.

Microsoft Virtual Earth to Be Offered With ESRI's ArcGIS Online Servic

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:39:52 GMT

Microsoft Corp. and ESRI today announced that ESRI ArcGIS users will have access to the robust mapping and imagery content provided by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform inside ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server. With Virtual Earth seamlessly integrated into ArcGIS 9.3 Desktop, ArcGIS users are now able to easily add base maps, which feature rich aerial and hybrid views, to perform data creation, editing, analysis, authoring and map publishing with one-click access.

Announcing trueSpace for Virtual Earth 3D Development

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:19:01 GMT

Today is a big day. BIG DAY. As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud! This is going to be a long post - get some coffee and make it diesel. Register and Download trueSpace 7.6 for free.

Virtual Earth: Polygon Search - Is Point Within Polygon?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:58:38 GMT

How to perform a polygon search to determine if a given Lat/Long point is within a given Polygon

Gold Coast : WPF and Virtual Earth revisited

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:59:16 GMT

I worked on a more creative/reusable approach to hosting Virtual Earth in a WPF application. If you have looked at any of my previous samples showing how to host Virtual Earth in a WPF app, you'll recall I was using the WinForms WebBrowser control to host an html page that in turn hosts Virtual Earth. Additionally, I used the WebBrowser control's ability to enable communication between managed code and JavaScript. One of the frustrations with this approach is that when using WinForms interop, all WinForms controls take the highest z-order in your app which means you cannot render WPF elements on top of the map. The other thing that has always bothered me about my sample is although it showed how to implement the general approach, it did not wrap all the functionality into a reusable WPF Virtual Earth control. Good news! I have an updated sample.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on a Map: Part 2 - Import Zip Code (U.S. Censu

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:55:39 GMT

Now that we've Made Sense of the U.S. Census ZCTA ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) files in Part 1 of this series, we are ready to import the U.S Census ZCTA Zip Code data into a database. In Part 2, we'll create database tables and import the Zip Code Boundary data into those tables in a MS SQL 2005 database.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on Map: Part1 - Make sense of U.S. Census Data

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:38:31 GMT

The data I'll focus on here is the Census 2000 5-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) in ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) format. Even though these files are in their own "special" format, described here, they are still just plain ASCII and easily converted into CSV files to be imported into a database. Well, you could look at the ARC/INFO Generate (ASCII) Metadata Cartographic Boundary File Format definition and write a parser that then saves in in a CSV format. Or, you could just download and use the one I wrote for this article.

Encoding Latitude and Longitude pairs for performance

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:17:27 GMT

In Virtual Earth we use lat/lon pairs everywhere, for pushpins, polylines and polygons but also for map bounds like the current view. This article aims to look at a better way to store and transmit these values. The encoding algorithm used is from Google maps. You will find an explanation of how and why we use it for Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom (some Examples + Source Code)

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:09:53 GMT

Some great examples of Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom!