The ArcGIS Explorer Blog announced that AGX 480 was released last night. I was wondering when build 480 was going to arrive given the May timeframe announced at the DevSummit. You’ll want to check out the “What’s New in ArcGIS Explorer 480” for all the improvements, but I’ll list some of the ones that I think are important:

• ArcSDE Support – FINALLY!
• GPX File Import – If you want to work with shapefiles and GPS, you don’t have to buy Google Earth Pro anymore
• Graticules and Reference Grids (OK, maybe not that important, but I like it)
• Raster Background Transparency – Get rid of the black borders on imagery
• Web Browser Support – AGX will run inside browser windows
• KML improvements – every little bit helps
• Increase performance – multi-threaded
• GeoRSS Support

How AGX handles point symbols is interesting and I’m anxious to give it a try. We’ve been working on a project in Google Earth for Trip Reduction but we might deploy it on AGX if build 480 is as good as it appears.