MarcoI don't think Microsoft will do that until1) there is enough computing power to render on-the-fly:a. all seasonsb. all light conditionsAt present that is the #1 big problem with photoscenery.Not everyone likes to fly at mid-day in the summertime.Some sort of conversion algorithms will have to be made on the photos to account for time-of-day, weather, and season...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Imagine if we wouldn't use drives anymore in 5 years! Imagine terrabytes of space on a chip less than a square inch big. Now that would be progress!It still astonishes me how long this old technology has survived. In fact IBM build the first hard drive in 1956. A new storage technology seems long overdue and one wonders why it hasn't happend yet?cheers, :-beerchugC.G.

>Marco>>I don't think Microsoft will do that until>>1) there is enough computing power to render on-the-fly:>a. all seasons>b. all light conditions>>At present that is the #1 big problem with photoscenery.>>Not everyone likes to fly at mid-day in the summertime.>>Some sort of conversion algorithms will have to be made on the>photos to account for time-of-day, weather, and season...Hi Rhett,I agree with you, those are the two biggest issues with current sat-imagery (together with the lack of uniformity between tiles).But, though I'm no expert in image processing, I think the lighting issue could be probably easily resolved.Infact, starting from:1) the 3d shape (mesh) of the terrain;2) the sun position when the sat-image was taken (calculated from the date and time the pic was taken);a program could easily calculate the shadowed areas of the orthophoto, process them, and "cancel" the shadows.Then, we would only need night photos in urban areas, and probably we'll have those in hi-res in 15 years from now.Regarding seasons, I think MS would accept to compromise and offer just one season if it's photorealistic terrain.I think most people would prefer one season on real terrain than 4 seasons on synthetic scenery.Finally, it's also possible that in 15 years we'll have full seasons coverage for sat-imagery! :)Marco