I think I know of a way this can be accomplished or at least faked. You know how the instanced maps have loading screen previews before you zone in? Use a rescaled version of those to give people an idea of what the concept is. Thus, you know it's a blue cave instead of a brown one with the same layout or you know the visual difference between a CoV and CoH office since they have different office wallpaper.
It would be nice if they added some kind of preview window for all the maps available in AE, like a couple of screenshots or a small video of the layout just to give you a feel of what the map actually looks like if you were playing it.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't have all the maps in game memorized and its very tedious to have to keep selecting the map, saving it, loading up the arc, entering mission etc just to see what its like when you are trying to get the perfect setting.
The birdseye view is alright for mob placement etc but it can look a lot different once you actually enter the map.