The original ACME Mapper was an improved front-end for Terraserver, a large geographical image database owned by Microsoft.
When Terraserver launched in 1998, it had aerial/satellite imagery for the entire world, at a resolution of 1 meter/pixel. Shortly after launching they removed everything but the USA images; this was never explained.
Terraserver's user interface is horrible, so I made my own interface that used their map tiles. I called it ACME Mapper and opened it to the public in 2001.
In 2004 Terraserver added high-resolution color images to their database. Coverage was limited to a few large metropolitan areas, but resolution went down to 1/4 meter/pixel, which is very good. "
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"Terraserver was a key piece in creation of TopoFusion, so it’s with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to it. Fortunately we still have great tilesets like MyTopo, Open Cycle Map, Color Aerials, Open Aerial, Canadian Topo’s, among many others! Terraserver maps were getting quite out of date, and I don’t think any of our users base relied on the old black and white aerials any more "
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The old B&W photos have some advantages depending on the question at hand.
I still got the msrmaps site to cough up info last night. The ghost in the machine?
I thought the Flash maps were fast and smooth.
The more tools in the toolbox, the better!