Microsoft launched a new feature called “Bird’s Eye View” to their Virtual Earth mapping service. From what I can tell, it provides aerial shots of just a few spots around the country. I have to assume that they’ll be adding more, since the current list of bird’s eye locations is pretty small. This isn’t to be confused with satellite images since those are provided separately across all maps. These views look to be shots from an airplane flying around a few landmarks. They provide rotation around the landmark, but the scrolling is limited to just the small area around it. This new features is still beta, but seems pretty limited at the moment and since these look to be shots from an airplane will be slow to grow outside of a few areas. You can get a similar effect (rotation, full scrolling, etc.) in Google Earth (though not quite as close). It’ll be interesting to watch how far MS takes this service and what features get added.