abnerone

I have discovered that there is a way to 'trick' the old mappoint site into forwarding you to the new maps.live.com site, even if you are not using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC. You will need to change your browser 'agent' that gets reported to the web site. There is a Firefox Extension that can do this. You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 Once it is added and you restart Firefox, there will be a User Agent Switch menu, under your Tools menu. If you switch it to Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP) then you will be forwarded. The only trouble with this, is that in theory, you would want to remember to switch it back after you are done to "default." Although perhaps it would not do much harm to leave it in that agent all the time. I suspect you will have some trouble with certain high level sites if you leave it in an inaccurate setting.

After more research, I have found the birds eye imagery is also called "oblique." Oblique imagery would show the side of a building, whereas straight overhead imagery would only show the roof. If you are seeing imagery taking from straight up at 90 degree to the earth, then this is not the bird eye view imagery. It does appear that all this imagery comes from this company and its technology: http://www.pictometry.com/faq.asp

Hey Keystone... Cool, you are right. This solves a big part of the problem. It does appear that the Mappoint link on each cache page first goes to the 'old' mappoint.msn.com site. Then if the site detects, that you are on a Windows computer (not Mac), and you are using Internet Explorer (not Firefox, Opera etc) then it will forward you to maps.live.com, *AND* it uses the direct coordinates, and pinpoints the cache location. You can then switch to birds eye view, and zoom in and there is your cache location. I am still struggling to figure out how to enter some form of direct coordinates into the maps.live.com location bar. The reason why this is useful, is if you are doing a puzzle cache soluiton or the 2nd stage of a multi, and want to view it in maps.live.com, but you have the coords manually in hand, instead from a link on a cache page. I can see in the maps.live.com URL itself, that results from the forwarding from mappoint, it seems to use the log/lat in "pure decimal" form. So no minutes or seconds, just degrees, with decimals. The geocaching site mainly uses the degree, and then minutes with the minute decimal. (no seconds) I found that the Jeeep.com link (yes, 3 e's) listed on every cache page, will take you to a converter, that will give you the log/lat in all forms, including the pure decimal form. However, no matter what I try so far, I can't figure out the syntax or exact format which will make the site happy with enter numerical decimal coords. I also started to explore, the "Build you own URL" help file which poohstickz pointed me to. That does look like it should work to enter the pure decimal numbers into the URL syntax. However, after trying to enter some pure decimal coords into the URL, the way it describes, I am still getting other locations in other states than what I should. I will keep poking at it. Anyone else feel free to poke your own sticks at it. abnerone

I did that before I posted the original message. I can't find anything about entering numerical coordinates.

FYI - I just realized that once you are within a birds eye view on the page above, that you can look at the same area from 4 directions. If you click the blue circles surrounding the triangle icon, marked N, S, W and E, it will spin around and show it from each direction. Wow. It is certainly apparent that only certain areas have this birds eye view imagery. I went to an area of northern Minnesota, and the birds eye view icon with not selectable at all. So each of us, will have to check our own locations for the birds eye view imagery. Let me know if someone can get it to take pasted coords! abnerone

Here is an example of the quality I have been since around the Twin Cities, MN area. I manually added this pushpin, at the location of a cache called "Allie and Annie's Secret" since it will not take the coords. I created a tinyurl.com link for this, to prevent it from breaking in half due to the long length of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/32ncbp Here is what google maps shows for the same area. http://tinyurl.com/39m5y4 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...6f-68faee40c00f

Hi knowschad... I have seen your logs quite a bit around in southern tiwn cities caches, so nice to meet you on here as well. True, I do not know if the "birds eye view" imagery is from airplane based aerial photography or satellite photography. Although I figure that there would be no reason why it could not be satellite photography, since I figure a satellites camera could be programmed to shoot at the earth at that angle as well. No need to debate it, but just curious...do you know for sure that the birds eye photos were not taken from a satellite, shooting across the earth at the proper angle? It is true that the quality seems to be so high, that I could see finding many caches just by printing out the birds eye photo, if we could get this site to accept the numerical coordinates. See ya on the trail! abnerone

Hello fellow cachers! I was thrilled to discover Microsoft's newest effort to provide a superior mapping website. In addition to the standard satellite imagery taken from straight above, they also offer a superior "birds eye view" by clicking on the icon with the buildings. Their birds eye view satellite photography appears far higher resolution than most available. It is also always taken at an angle to the ground, which in my opinion is far more useful than imagery from straight above. If you go to http://maps.live.com/ you can see for yourself if you like it. The satellite imagery is available under the "Birds Eye View" icon. http://maps.live.com/ There are a couple hurdles I wish we could solve to connect this site to the geocaching community. 1. It appears that this new site does not yet support the direct entry of coordinates. I have tried pasting them into the site in various formats, but it does not understand any of them. I am surprised by this, since nearly every other mapping site, handles the direct coordinates without any trouble. I have left them feedback on this, but the more feedback they get, the better chance of them listening. So go ahead and give your feedback if you have time. 2. If we can figure out a way for live.maps.com to handle direct coordinates, I would love for geocaching.com to add a standard direct maps.live.com link to each cache page, like they currently do for several popular sites. Please chime in with any thoughts. Also, please let everyone know if you have figured out a method for entering direct coordinates. Getting a nice visual on the cache area from this site, would give clues as to the terrain, best parking, and length of hike from parking for anyone exploring direct cache possibilities for the days outing. Thanks and happy caching! abnerone