This video from TED offers a powerful tour through some seriously magical experiences now offered by Bing maps. From seamless zoom animations to interior transport, integrated live video and even astounding astronomy features, it’s clear that Bing is pushing the online-map envelope.

I’m excited to explore and use these new tools. Though it turns out that you have to install Microsoft’s Silverlight add-on in order to get these phenomenal augmented-reality tools. That is fine on this here PC, but sadly it means that Bing will never work on my iPad. Pffft.

It’s clear, though, that this is just the tip of the technical iceberg for maps. As Bing architect and TED presenter Blaise Aguera y Arcas makes clear, the Maps app is merely a starting point for accessing myriad tools of all sorts: “Maps, directions are really just one” of the applications that can play out on this 3-dimensional canvas.

Seeing this demo really transports me back to all of those sci-fi movie scenes where our protagonist, or one of his assistants, lords over a computer screen that zooms in on interactive, 3-d blueprints of whatever city, building, or sewer system he is preparing to penetrate, so that they can pinpoint the ideal plan of attack. Now, our purposes are not likely to ever be so exciting, but it looks like our computer mapping tools soon will be.