microsoft competition?

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Aerial surveyors also have an aggressive agenda. At the moment, two groups appear to be leading the technical push: Perth-based NearMap (see page 13) and Microsoft Corp’s Vexcel subsidiary in Austria.

NearMap’s chief executive, Stuart Nixon, claims to have achieved a twenty-fold cost reduction in the generation of 3D models of cities. Its ultimate goal is to cover 20 per cent of the world’s population.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is pouring money into its Virtual Earth effort. It wants to build a processing system that will ingest data from its Vexcel Utracam digital sensors, as well as other sources of imagery. Its plan is to build city models on a routine basis. Speaking at the November Spatial Innovation Summit organised by SSI and ASIBA, Microsoft’s Asia Pacific business development manager, Peter Ulm, said that the aim was to develop technology that would allow the company to routinely capture imagery of the world’s top 2000 cities every year.