Microsoft updates Bing Maps, adds loads more 3D cities and Streetside views

Microsoft’s Bing Maps team has made a major update to its service, adding Streetside views (its version of Google’s Street View) to 64 new cities, and 3D maps to 29 new cities.

Among the new cities gaining Streetside views are Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Las Vegas, and Chicago. All of the Streetside additions are in the US. The new list of 3D cities also focuses on American locations, including Atlanta, Denver, and New Orleans, but Copenhagen in Denmark and Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria in Canada are also included.

Universal Studios and Disney World in Florida make an appearance in the 3D cities list too -- handy if you’re thinking of taking a trip to one (or both) of those theme parks before summer ends.

Microsoft also announces that "New high-resolution imagery is available on Bing Maps in over 150 countries on every continent in the world. Using a variety of sources from aircraft-mounted UltraCam Osprey cameras to satellite imagery from our partner Digital Globe, Bing Maps brings you high-resolution views of your favorite vacation spots".

As welcome as this update is, Bing Maps still lags a very long way behind Google which provides "panoramic Street View imagery for more than 3,000 cities across 50 countries" and recently added Iceland to that list.