Ok, this is much better than Lively, it’s a new platform allowing you to create 3D Movies.  I found out at XtraNormal from TechCrunch – Build Your Own 3D Movie Clips In A Flash With Xtranormal.

Here’s the URL http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20081016182908570  though the program is very slow and the background didn’t render – I think there’s a lot of promise here for all kinds of things you can do with it – though the program is a bit sluggish.

Imagine when a 100 times more traffic hits XtraNormal’s servers – I don’t think it will take long for that to happen!

Reading about an update to Virtual Earth Brings Bird's Eye Images to 3d Model in Data Mining Blog got me curious to try Microsoft Virtual 3D Beta myself and I liked what I saw; I found this comment in Data Mining got me interested in trying Virtual 3D Beta out:

"….When viewing an area in the 3d model, one can turn on the bird's eye view data. This will reorient the view so that the image is aligned with the model. In addition, it marks on the map the outline of the image data allowing you to browse the location in 3d and then select a view to focus on."

"….recent history of the online mapping and geographic imagery and data space has been all about amassing data – road data, 3d geometry for buildings, images, etc. Now the players are working out how to leverage that data for better user experience and a key part of that is bringing different types of data together in some way. This is a great example of this happening. Bird's eye images provide the user with plenty of context to help them make sense of locations."

I think my insight that Microsoft might be interested in buying HopStop, together with this additional mapping capability, makes Microsoft Virtual 3D Beta as powerful as Google Earth.