A bird's eye view of Redmond High School

Over the last several years, there has been an enormous increase in online aerial mapping. Live Search Maps provides a variation of aerial mapping called bird's eye view. Rather than looking straight down on the area being photographed, a bird's eye view is an aerial image that is taken 30° off center. The effect is striking — you see features in a more 3D-like perspective. Here's a bird's eye view of Redmond High School.

Setting Bird's eye view
To set bird's eye view when viewing a map, select Bird's Eye as the type of view from the Live Search Maps toolbar. Note that this map view may not be available for all map areas.

Compass Control
Another useful feature of Live Search Maps is the ability to view a bird's eye image from 4 different directions: North, South, East, and West. The compass control allows you to control the bird's eye view. Clicking the E, S, W, or N button determines which directional image is displayed. Clicking the + and - buttons determines the zoom level for the image. Clicking the clockwise and counter-clockwise buttons rotates the image.

Here's how Redmond High School looks like from the 4 different directional bird's eye views:

Give it a try!