Discontinuing Investment is Such Sweet Sorrow

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 support will continue until December 2011, and during that time it will still be in the AJAX map control (version 6.3) for 3rd party use.  I will personally continue to monitor the comments sections and the contact link, so you can keep sending me questions.

Thanks for all the great comments, feedback, and questions over the last two years.  It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve really enjoyed working with you all.

Here is the announcement:

https://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/11/02/changes-to-bird-s-eye-and-3d-maps.aspx

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2010
  Hi Nikolai, Why is the feed being discontinued?  Doesn't it use the same imagery data as the 2D map?  It seems simple enough to continue to supply the feed, even if the API is no longer supported, no?

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 29, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2011
  Tom, Caroline, Mark:  I just noticed that the comment section became moderated and I hadn't seen them until just now.  I'm not sure why this changed from before, but rest assured I was not trying to ignore you. Tom:  much of the data is the same, yes, but some is not.  I do not believe there are specific plans to take down the 3d-specific data, but Dec. 2011 is the earliest it could happen. Caroline:  I know, I'm sad too. Mark:  The code itself will continue to function, the question is whether the servers it expects will still be there.  Sometime before Dec 2011 I plan on sitting down (sorry for vague timeline... this would be an outside the budget type project for me) and looking at all the things that will be necessary to make a fully standalone VE3D app work.  Your type of app is in fact the one that's most likely to work just fine. I'm not sure if lobotomized is the word I would use, but this certainly does represent shifting priorities.  It's been a good number of years since VE3D came out, and things have in fact changed in the market, quite dramatically.  Unfortunately I'm not really in a position to explain any further.  However, I still think there are good uses of VE3D as an engine, such as yours, and that's why I'll be making that last "here's how to make it run forever" post. "Stable and bug-free".  Well, of course it is, I wrote it!  Er, well, I guess there were a few other folks too :)  But yeah, the last release we did was a perf and stability release, as we were already at that time winding down the feature investment.  Speaking as an engine dev, I'm actually pretty proud of the final result. Is it time to bail?  Well, there will be no more features, and no more bug fixes (excluding "take over your machine" security bugs, but we've had zero of those so far and I don't see why some would be found now).  At some point some of the data feeds might stop working, and result in some loss of functionality.  Predicting those effects will be part of my upcoming post.  But that's where it stands.  Your main options are to stick with VE3D, try to figure out GE (pretty limited programming interface) or WorldWind (.net, but also inactive development). I hope that I can help you out with VE3D if that's your decision.  Thanks for using it so far, and thanks for the time and effort you've spent with it, wherever you end up going.

• Anonymous
  June 08, 2011
  Any updates?  You had mentioned you'd be posting a "here's how you can keep it working forever" type post.  We don't use any of the 3d model or terrain data.  Just the sattelite and road maps projected on the globe... will this continue to function?

• Anonymous
  June 09, 2011
  NikolaiF (?):  I promise that I will get that out before end of support.  I understand that sooner is better than later. Of all the data types, imagery is the least likely to change (my own personal estimation, not a policy statement).  It will need to have some sort of DEM data source, but ConstantElevationDataSource will work for this as a bare minimum, giving a flat ground with no network calls made.  Adding your own imagery data sources will also continue to work, either on top of or instead of the defaults. You can also pretty easily modify the DemData sample to load your own DEM from whatever source you please.  Your own models may be loaded using a ActorDataSource/XFileDataSource as guides, though that's more work.