Health & Fitness
Street View Now Available for Fairfax City - From Bing
Although most of Fairfax City is missing from Google Streetview, Bing Maps has made us one of the few places with full coverage in Northern Virginia for their "Streetside View" dialog.
Since 2007, Google Maps has been offering a street view dialog, which allows you to view the world from ground level, as opposed to aerial imagery. They have an ever expanding database of images that are taken from a fleet of cars that literally drive around with a 360 degree camera on the roof that snaps a high quality photo ever few seconds. In 2009, a significant portion of the DC region was added to street view, though most areas west of the beltway in Northern Virginia were left out, including Fairfax City.
Poking around on Bing Maps the other day, I noticed they now have a “streetside view” dialog, similar to Google. But unlike Google, Bing Maps has all of Fairfax City covered. Although the Bing Maps Streetside View dialog is newer and has less coverage, they seem to have focused their initial efforts in Virginia on independent cities.
The images are also fairly recent. They appear to have been taken in early summer 2011.
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To use the Bing Maps Street View, first click here to get to Bing Maps. Once there zoom in to Fairfax City, or search for Fairfax City. Then click on the little icon that looks like a blue man (next to the “traffic” button). All of the roads with coverage will become highlighted in blue. You can then click on any blue road and you will be taken to streetside view. Once in the streetside view, you can rotate the camera or move up and down the street.
