After nearly 10 years in production, Microsoft Bing Imagery will be phased out from GeoFS HD subscriptions. ESRI, a leading geographic data provider, will replace it and will be identified as HD* in GeoFS. The reason behind the change is Microsoft's decision to move the service to their Azure cloud infrastructure. Their new commercial plan makes it absolutely out of reach to GeoFS and an alternative had to be found to keep HD running. While it may not be a 1:1 match, ESRI imagery is providing a satisfactory quality for about the same price as Microsoft Bing Maps use to propose.
In an effort of transparency, I want to make sure everybody understands the change and can try and compare the data before renewing or commiting to a subscription. For this reason, the change is being spread over the course of 1 year starting 1 November 2026. Between this date and the 31 October 2027, active HD subscriptions will be able to use both MS bing and ESRI. After this, MS Bing will cease to work and ESRI will be the only imagery provider available to any running HD subscription.
Note that any 1 year subscription pruchased after the 31st of October 2026 will not be able to use Microsoft Bing Images for a full year (past 31 October 2027) but will run on ESRI data only after that date.
In order to try the new data without too much commitment, GeoFS is now offering shorter "1 month" HD subscription.
Also, all accounts active within the last 6 months have their trial period cleared and enabled again so they can evaluate the new data.
Subscription prices will remain the same for the time being.
An explanation is provided on the HD subscription page at geo-fs.com to warn all new subscribers of the change before they click on "purchase".
2 comments:
Hey Xavier, I understand the update, but Esri world imagery is in most cases much lower quality sadly. Comparing it to Bing and google maps you can clearly see the difference in Esri being much more pixelated an yellow-ish. I am not hating in any way, I love your sim, I just wanted to give some feedback.
@AeroBlue Agreed, sadly. From the air it's a passable substitute but not on the ground. I wonder exactly how far out of reach the Bing/Google imagery is price-wise? Surely you could still keep it as an option even if it's very expensive
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