InfoStrat.VE Release 2 is now up!

This may come as a surprise, but we have been secretly (well, almost!) working on a new release of InfoStrat.VE. This is the awesome control that lets you use Bing Maps 3-D (formerly Virtual Earth 3-D) in your WPF and Microsoft Surface applications with ease and no airspace issues or messing with ugly interop. (Actually, you don't have to do the interop, but I do.) 

This control was first released almost ten months ago and since then has had over 45,000 hits and 3700 downloads. It was the first (and only) publicly available control that enables using Bing Maps 3-D in your own WPF and multi-touch Surface applications.

There are two big new features I'm really excited about. The first is the addition of a Windows 7 Touch version of the control. The Windows 7 Touch control is at parity with the Surface control, so you can now develop great multi-touch Bing Maps applications in Windows. My colleague, Joe Milenky, made significant contributions towards getting the Windows 7 Touch control up and running. This version only requires .NET 3.5 SP1.

The second big thing is an overhauled set of map movement algorithms and a few new manipulations. The new code allows manipulation-centered panning and zooming, plus we have added Pivot (rotate two or more fingers to spin around that point) and Tilt (pitch). There is a MapManipulationMode property that you can toggle to change between Panning and Tilting, very similar to how Surface Globe from the Windows 7 Touch Pack works.

In fact, with InfoStrat.VE R2, you could make your own Surface Globe and not be able to tell the difference!

There's also much more than that, but those are the two most visible things. The other changes include Bing Maps 3-D version 4 support, plus 12 different feature requests or bugs submitted by the InfoStrat.VE community on the CodePlex discussion forums.

And how much would you pay for this? $500? $1000? No, it's free, and even better, open source!

Head over to the CodePlex site and download the new binaries and source code right now!

There are more details on the new features in the discussion thread announcing this release.