Multimap Birds Eye View

[Thunderbolt]

Discovered this the other day, think its pretty good, maybe better than google's street view, which is what I would ordinarily use.

www.multimap.com

My question is how do they get the birds Eye View images?
The reason I ask is that I have noticed a helicopter fly over where I live in Wiltshire, in Bristol and Somerset over the last few weeks that seems to have a relatively large object suspended slightly below it, which I though might be the camera. I would have taken a photo, but have only seen it while driving. It just seems that this seems a very expensive way method of doing such a project.

Had a quick google and can't find anything, besides I thought it might interest people.

 

[Westyfield2]

Photos look like the ones on that Microsoft Live Local one...

IIRC they use (relatively) low-flying planes for the photos.

 

[D D Danneh]

I imagine so, yes. It might cost a lot, I don't know, but it doesn't matter:

Multimap, from Bing.

Bing, from Microsoft.

 

[manoz]

Yeah I like that feature a lot, Google should do it too

 

[Jotun]

Interesting, not seen that before. I would have expected a camera to be either hand held or mounted on a gyroscopic platform rather than suspended beneath the air craft, so I expect that it is something unrelated. Also the photos of my house show a car that I've not owned for over 2 years now so they photos must be fairly old.

I'd guess they use planes rather than helicopters based on price, IIRC a helicopter is around £500 an hour for a single engined one, and nearly double that for a twin. If flying below a certain altitude you need a twin engined one for it. I think it was necessary for going below 1000ft - the photos could have been taken higher than that so may not have been necessary.

 

[Puzzled]

On Bing (Microsoft Live) you can zoom in to the birds eye images in 3D mode which is pretty cool.

I use it all the time at work for getting to know an area or when you miss something on a survey.