DeepEarth is a mapping control combining Microsoft’s Virtual Earth with Silverlight 2.0. The open source project was released on CodePlex by its creators, a team of .NET enthusiasts.
According to the project creators:
DeepEarth is a mapping control powered by the combination of Microsoft’s Silverlight 2.0 platform and the DeepZoom (MuliScaleImage) control. At its core, it builds on these innovative technologies to provide an architecture for bringing together layers for services, data providers, and your own custom mapping elements together into an impressive user experience. Also featured are in depth examples of how you can leverage Virtual Earth Web Services to take advantage of advanced GIS service functionality. This is what you need to get an interactive, native Silverlight 2.0, map into your application today.
Some of its main features are:
- Fully implemented map control with property and event model
- Fully templated set of map navigation controls
- Layers for inclusion of Points, LineStrings and Polygons (OGS)
- Conversion library for geography to screen coordinate systems.
- Geocoding (find an address)
- Reverse Geocoding (getting an address from a point on the map)
- Routing (Directions)
- Marque zoom selection (default Ctrl-click and drag or from menu toggle)
- Map rotation
DeepEarth has a lot to catch up with Google’s Earth which offers 3D views of certain areas allowing the user to fly around the buildings and many other features like lights and shadows simulating the real view under the sun.
The project has been released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).
Useful links: A working example, Source Code, Demo Video on YouTube.