Introduction
With this API you can send quadkeys or tile coordinates through a
GET request to receive a 256 x 256 PNG with
the corresponding aerial imagery tile usage "heat colors" painted in it. Aerial imagery requests account for the greatest portion of all imagery requests. The image is transluscent, and thus can be
used as a tile layer.
You can also custom-tune the heat gradient's color distribution by specifying the tile count's percentile, in all the sorted/ordered
tile counts in memory, to which the max tile count (and thus, strongest red) will be set. The default max tile count (strongest red)
for all heat map tile layer requests without this parameter is the 99th percentile tile count in all the sorted/ordered tile counts. Tiles with no color were visited a negligible amount of times.
(Usually less than 1000-2500 times at LOD 13; approximately 15-40 times at LOD 16 for higher resolution data)
All tile counts are aggregated at
LOD/zoom 16, which means the heat map's ground resolution per LOD-16-tile
is 2.3887m/px * 256px/tile = 611.5072 meters per LOD-16-tile. For faster performance, tile counts are aggregated and averaged at LOD 13 for low LOD/zoom (LOD 5 and lower) heat map tile layer requests.
For tile count requests, tile counts are never averaged; they are aggregated down to the tile request's LOD/zoom (from LOD 16) and returned as is.
Below you will find documentation for all the available GET requests.
This tool is still being worked on. For the
moment, the aerial data corresponds to No data available. This will be expanded such another date or date ranges can be included. This information is up-to-date and accurate as of 03/05/2021 -
if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions/concerns email me at ivmirand.
A month's worth of data will be present, updated around the 3rd of each month. Streetside and Birdseye heat maps are currently not being updated.
You can also request other heat maps ("custom" heat maps), representing other types of data, depending on availability. The currently available data types are:
- Streetside: Heat Map of Streetside Imagery (current timeframe: February 14, 2019 to March 14, 2019)
- Streetside Coverage: Streetside availability map. All white: Opacity increases as Streetside availability "bubbles" density increases. (current timeframe: as of March 2019)
- Birdseye: Heat Map of Birdseye Imagery (current timeframe: February 14, 2019 to March 14, 2019)
- Aerial_B2C: Heat Map for aerial imagery requested by non-business customers (current timeframe: January 01, 2022 to January 31, 2022)
- Road: Heat Map of Road Tiles (current timeframe: No data available)
- Urbanicity: Machine learning work in select cities/areas that detect urban areas in aerial imagery. The hotter, the higher the chance the tile contains "urban" imagery. (current timeframe: as of November 2020, work in progress)
- Vintage: Shows the freshness of the Aerial Imagery for each tile on the most demanded areas (for each quadkey/tile in the aerial heat map; that is, that has been hit at least the minimum amount of times to show up there). The colder, the fresher, relative to/starting at the data's last measurement/update date. (Last measurement date: No data available)
- MFS2020: Heat Map for MFS2020 (Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020) (1000-2500 hits minimum at LOD 16) (current timeframe: No data available)
- Satellite: Heat Map for Satellite Imagery (e.g. low LODs, like at LOD 9) (current timeframe: No data available)
- URes: Heat Map for Ultra Resolution Imagery (e.g. LOD 18+) aggregated at LOD 16 (current timeframe: No data available)
- Population_FB: Population Map from Facebook data aggregated at LOD 14 (current timeframe: as of 2020)
- Sat_Or_Missing: Places with no High Resolution Imagery, or even missing Imagery aggregated at LOD 13 (current timeframe: No data available)
- Missing: Places with missing Imagery aggregated at LOD 13 (current timeframe: No data available)
- Multiple_Pids_Across_Lods: places with two or more distinct sets of Imagery across LODs 16-18 aggregated at LOD 16 (current timeframe: No data available)
With this tool, any data file containing a list of comma-separated
quadkey,value pairs can be can be loaded, interpreted and rendered as a heat map in the same way the aerial heat map is rendered.
Future work includes the possibility of making this more accessible such that users can render their own heat data following this format. In the meantime, you may personally request such.
See Bing's Map Control Interactive SDK for an interactive learning experience regarding the creation of maps using custom tile layers/sources.