Today Bing Maps have released their first street side imagery outside of North America in our very own UK capital city London. This first release appears to cover the capitals major roads but lets hope there is lots more to come over the next few months. Below is an overview of the coverage:
Bing’s innovative “street side” interface has been used allowing you to cruise along a street as a long strip of imagery, here is an example going over Westminster Bridge:
The new imagery is available using HTML5 powered street slide on www.bing.co.uk/maps or using the Silverlight panorama viewer at www.bing.com/maps/explore. The street slide tool is brilliant for actually finding locations or shops in a street but the panorama viewer still has the biggest full 360 wow factor:
Obviously Bing have a long way to go to catch up with Google’s coverage of street side imagery but this is a great first step and the first competition we have seen to Google’s since Earthware partnered with Seety’s streetview way back in 2008.