YOU don't have to go far to walk the mean streets of Los Angeles or Las Vegas. All you need is the latest upgrade of Microsoft's Virtual Earth software, which contains lifelike 3D landscapes of US cities.

An earlier version contained aerial images of streets and buildings, which meant visitors could scan cities from above. Rival product Google Earth shows 3D images, but with buildings displayed as grey boxes. With the new Virtual Earth you can see the textures and colours of streets and buildings in 15 cities, viewing them from any angle.

To create the images, Microsoft took around 10 million photos of each city from planes and vehicles and logged their GPS coordinates, enabling the software to recognise the same building from different shots and represent it in 3D. Microsoft plans to expand to 100 international cities by mid-2007.