Creating New Map Overlays in StreetDeck
StreetDeck, the in-car computer navigation/infotainement software, uses the MapPoint engine for its built-in maps, and then can overlay the Microsoft Live Virtual Earth maps on top of those images. VE supplies several overlays – street images, satellite images, hybrid street name + satellite images. Using the “show extended virtual earth options” checkbox in StreetDeck, it is possible to show all these modes.

StreetDeck downloads these areas when it is connected (online) and caches the tiles, 256×256 square, corresponding to the zoom level and lat-long of a given area. These files are saved in the Documents & Settings->[current user]->StreetDeck->VirtualEarth folder.
There is a different folder for each type of map:
Most online maps (Google Maps, Virtual Earth) are tessellated (broken into square tiles) based on a splitting algorithm, served up by a tile server.
The Virtual Earth approach is documented here: http://www.viavirtualearth.com/VVE/Articles/WorldWind.ashx
At each zoom level, there are 4x as many tiles to represent a map of the earth. Zoomed out completely, only 4 tiles represent earth, and each pixel represents over 70,000 meters. At further zoom levels, the distance represented by each pixel decreases. At a zoom level of 17 (the maximum supported by StreetDeck), each pixel represents about 1.19 meters, so that a car is approximately 6 pixels large.

Microsoft Research provides a tool for overlaying existing maps on to virtual earth for “mash ups” (combinations) called MapCruncher:
http://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/

(source: http://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/Gallery/)
The basic requirements are:
1) The map has to be to scale and geographically accurate. It cannot be a ‘schematic’ map
2) The map needs to be an overhead, 2D map for it to match up correctly.
The process to get these maps into StreetDeck is, is:
1) Export your high-resolution map as a vector file (WMF, for example) or as a high-resolution TIFF or jpeg.
2) Load it into the mapcruncher application
3) Using the mapcruncher tools, locate three or more points in common between the virtual earth maps and the overlaid map, so that the cruncher can figure out where the appropriate tile boundaries will go
4) Export the maps. This will create a new folder with thousands of small tile files. The files will be named with numbers corresponding to their zoom level (i.e. level 17 files will have 17-number names)
5) Choose which maps inside StreetDeck will be replaced: Aerial, Roads, etc.
6) Run StreetDeck and browse the area to be mapped, zooming in and out so that some maps are downloaded for each zoom level. Quit streetdeck.
7) In Documents & Settings->[current user]->StreetDeck->Road, for instance, there will be a number of folders named “17”, “16”, “15” etc.
Using a bulk renaming tool such as Jim Wilsher’s bulk rename http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php , pre-pend a letter ‘r’ before each file name. This is necessary because the tiles for Road are prepended with ‘r’.
9) Sort the files, by length, into each of the corresponding folders (i.e. files created by mapcruncher that have 17 numerals (plus the letter r) would go in the 17 folder, etc.
10) Re-run streetdeck; when browsing those areas, and zooming in and out, the tiles created by mapcruncher should be visible. Toggling the virtual earth feature in streetdeck will allow a comparison between the original files and the overlay.
Good luck!
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