Microsoft has improved the Bing Maps performance to a new level interactivity. This is what the new beta version of Bing Maps shows – it uses Silverlight to display 3D images and its own version of street-level images.

The company presented to the media the new beta version in Wednesday during a discussion of other improvements to the search engine. Bing Maps Beta is available from today. Along with it, several other new features in the main Bing search results are released too.

Bing Maps Beta requires the installation of Microsoft Silverlight which provides very smooth three-dimensional transitions between satellite and street-view imagery. Like Google Street View, Microsoft has driven the streets of major cities such as San Francisco and assembled its own library of map-related images. Microsoft has street-level imagery for around 100 U.S. cities, it has announced that is adding more imagery on a constant basis.

With the new beta service users are able to find images of items inside popular tourist destinations, such as art exhibits inside museums and other geotagged images available on the Internet through Microsoft Photosynth. Web developers can also develop web applications to run inside the Bing Maps Beta. A good example can be an application that works with Newseum to index local papers inside maps and let Bing users see the front pages of newspapers across the country.

In addition, Bing Maps Beta users will be able to see local tweets thanks to a partnership with Twitter shown during the event. Twitter recently rolled out a geolocation service.