The Virtual Earth team just released the latest update to the Virtual Earth map control. Of course, we’ve updated the docs, and you can see it in action with our interactive SDK.

What's new? Here are the highlights:

Enhanced 3D Models
The map detail for Las Vegas, NV; Phoenix, AZ; Dallas, TX; and Denver, CO features improvements in 3D model accuracy and resolution detail to reveal more buildings, small terrain features, building textures, and trees that enhance overall realism.

Printing Support
Printing support for maps is enhanced to print the driving route in relation to the map. Printing support is also expanded for cross-browser support of Internet Explorer® 6 and 7, Firefox 2 for PC, and Apple Safari 2 and 3 for Mac only.

Safari Support
New map controls include better support for  Apple® Safari™ 2 and new support for Safari 3, enabling Mac® users to enjoy many of the features of Virtual Earth™ that are available on Internet Explorer®.

Bird’s Eye Hybrid
Customers can now select a new map style called Bird’s Eye Hybrid that adds street names to the bird’s eye maps to provide end users better visual context and orientation.

Bird’s Eye View in 3D
Users can easily toggle bird’s eye view on and off for a seamless end-user experience.

Localized Directions in Metropolis
Organizations can now provide users with localized driving or walking directions in 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian, among others.

New Locales
The Virtual Earth™ dashboard, or navcontrol, is localized to support languages including English for U.S.-based speakers, Japanese, Italian, Spanish for U.S.-based speakers, as well as French for both France and Canada-based speakers.

New Walking Directions
New in this release, users in North America and the European Union can now find the most direct route to walk to their destination, ignoring one-way streets, medians, and other detours that pertain to motor vehicles.

Traffic-based Routing
Want to take the frontage road and avoid the highway at rush hour? Traffic-based routing lets users choose a route based on current traffic flows to get where they’re going faster.

New Reverse Geocoding
New in this release, users in the U.S. can now find the closest street address based only on latitude and longitude coordinates from a GPS or other geospatial device.

Version Compatibility
Version 6.1 is backwards compatible with version 6.0.
 
For more information about licensing and pricing, contact maplic@microsoft.com.