The Virtual Earth v5 API SDK was officially released today.  Check out the details in the interactive SDK at:

http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/

New features this release include:

  • New generic VEShape class for pushpins, poylines, and polygons
  • New VEShapeLayer class to support drawing of pushpins, polylines, and polygons in separate layers
  • Custom events for VEShape pushpins, polylines, polygons
  • Improved customization for VEShapes - control for pushpin shapes and info boxes
  • Improved GeoRSS support - support for geoRss points, lines, and polygons
  • Improved loading performance with reduction of initial requests and compression
  • New "Mini" Map navigation control support
  • Improved accuracy of centering scenes in Birdseye
  • Enhanced Birdseye navigation (same as Live Search Maps)

I'll post some v5 API samples here soon, so check back.