Hello all, When we announced that we're "discontinuing investment" in VE3D earlier this year, many of you expressed concern that this would mean you can't use VE3D anymore. I deal with technical issues, so let me address those. There's certainly nothing...

Hello all, We have just announced that we will be discontinuing investment in VE3D . In the short term, the 3D view will be removed from bing.com/maps. The 3D control itself will continue to function, and data will continue to be served to it. The...

With the 3.6 release Firefox changed the plugin API which broke Virtual Earth 3D temporarily. To allow people to upgrade Firefox and continue to use Bing Maps 3D we have released a new version which will work with this Firefox version as well as older...

It is possible (and pretty easy) to add your own weather data (based on your own data sources, or just for fun) to VE3D using WorldEngine.Environment.Weather. For example, to add some nice fluffy clouds all over: Host.WorldEngine.Environment.Weather...

Goodness for the new year: Have you seen the Microsoft Surface Globe application in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 ? There are plenty of videos of the app in action on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/YouTubeSurfaceGlobe . Would you like to...

Posting some answers to questions I've gotten recently. Bug in the samples: Kind of silly that I hadn't noticed this until now, but there's an error in the sample html for most of the samples. The name of the functions used for plug-in load and...

In some scenarios it may be desirable to install the VE3D engine without visiting the www.bing.com/maps site, and/or to avoid the individual downloads that the setup package performs (eg offline or enterprise installations). The main installation msi...

Sorry for the glut of posts this week. I hadn't been able to write much, but there were still interesting topics and questions coming up and I'm trying to address that backlog now. So, without further ado: It is possible to host VE3D in a variety of...

I've gotten a few questions lately about how to do some alpha effects using models, specifically MeshGraphicsObject. After you create the GraphicsObject, it has a RenderState object available on it. The fields on this object will be familiar to those...

I was asked the other day about how to load multiple x file -based models into VE3D without having to place each one manually. I've written up a sample here . The idea is more or less a fusion of the existing ActorDataSource and XFile samples, using the...

Just got a good question: what if I want to prevent the camera from moving outside certain bounds, for example to restrict altitude? Technically it may be best to implement your own CameraController, so that you can make sure the restrictions are done...

I just fielded a few good questions via email about actor data sources, and thought it would make a good post. Actor data sources are a way of getting little bits of your code (actors) into the world, handing spatial indexing and cache management for...

As you may be aware, the website changed names to Bing Maps: http://www.bing.com/maps/ . The 3D view on the site is now called "Bing Maps 3D". As a developer it doesn't change much for you, and in terms of the engine/SDK it's still valid to refer to...

You may recall that I posted about a data format change for the new version. The final switch-over is going to happen July 9th. If you are still using an old version, models will stop displaying. So upgrade now, the new version is better anyway. For...

I was having a discussion with Kurt Guenther from Infusion yesterday on the topic of WMS servers and VE3D. There is a large amount of very interesting spatial data out there served by Web Map Services , or WMS servers. VE3D is able to process this data...

My, it has been a long time since I posted. I promise I will try to be better. Recently I was asked if it is possible to change the location of the cache file. It is, with certain minor restrictions. You can change the location by adding this to user...

Folks have really reacted to my mention of manual rendering, so I've made a sample for it. Good thing, too, because to be frank there are a few warts. On the upside, however, it is possible to work around all of them and the code required is not too scary...

Anisotropic has been a bit of a frustration for us because while it is very easy to do (it's really just a flag to DirectX), the compatibility issue I mentioned before made it a pain to actually get it in to the control. It's a shame we couldn't turn...

Our new version has gone live. Head on over to maps.live.com and click "3D" to upgrade. This release is billed primarily as a perf and bug release because it doesn't add a lot of new features at the end-user level (though I think you will be pleased with...

As part of our version update, we are also updating the file format of our 3D buildings. The upside is that the new data format is significantly smaller, for faster download. The downside is that old versions of the code cannot understand the new data...

At times it can be useful to know when and if errors are occurring in VE3D. When instructed, VE3D produces a log file that can be helpful for diagnosis. This requires editing the user.config file and adding an entry: <setting name="Logging" serializeAs...

Next week we'll be releasing a new version of the control. The focus of the release is on perf and bug fixes, but it also adds a set of interesting new functions for managed code developers. I'll be posting updated samples, and more detail on the changes...

I do love having a developer community out there. We've had lots of requests for direct WPF integration of VE3D, and we've certainly wanted to make it part of the story... and then someone else just goes and does it. Marc Schweigert called this to me...

Ever since I got a Touchsmart at home I've been very interested in the desktop touch experience, and so in the last couple days I decided to play with how I could incorporate it into VE3D. The code itself isn't really ready for consumption, but if you...

Hello all, I've had a few emails regarding our files being down this weekend. Sorry I didn't give a heads up earlier, but our backing servers are transitioning to a new host. They tell me the servers should be back tomorrow morning (3/2/09) at 8am...