Posted on 09/23/2004 4:29:52 PM PDT by PetroniusMaximus
I downloaded it - cool beyond words! It really give you a unique perspective with regards to Geography. I zoomed from a hemisphere view down to a Land Sat view of my roof! I though Freepers (with fast connections) might enjoy this.
NASA has released a free new tool that lets you see the world in a brand new way. "World Wind", a 260mb application, lets you rotate a 3d model of the Earth in realtime while dynamically loading satellite data fills in the detail in full color...
Features ++++++++++++++
3D Engine
World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and SRTM elevation data to experience Earth in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there.
Particular focus was put into the ease of usability so people of all ages can enjoy World Wind. All one needs to control World Wind is a two button mouse. Additional guides and features can be accessed though a simplified menu. Navigation is automated with single clicks of a mouse as well as the ability to type in any location and automatically zoom into it.
World Wind was designed to run on recent PC hardware with 3D accleration. Please refer to the download section for more information on system requirements.
Blue Marble
World Wind has a full copy of the Blue Marble, a spetacular true-color image of the entire Earth as seen on NASA's Earth Observatory: the Blue Marble.
Put together from data of a variety of satellites such as MODIS and Terra, the Blue Marble can be seen in all it's glory at 1 km per pixel resolution.
Land Sat 7
Using World Wind, you can continue to zoom past Blue Marble and reveal the extremely detailed seamless mosaic of LandSat 7 data.
LandSat 7 is a collection of images from 1999-2003 at an impressive 15 m per pixel resolution. It includes other color bands such as the infrared spectrum. Users will be able browse these different sets as they become available. Any changes and updates are automatically inherited by World Wind.
LandSat 7's resolution makes it possible to see your own city, neighborhood, or landmarks in your vicinity. Seeing the whole globe like this puts the world in context with scientifically accurate data.
The complete LandSat 7 data set is too large to fit on a single machine so World Wind only downloads what you see and stores a compressed copy on your computer for later viewing.
More here...
http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/features.html
Download page...
http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/download.html
ping for later...
Thanks - I've been waiting for it.
Amazing. Ping!
Is it similar to terraserver?
***Is it similar to terraserver?***
50x better in terms of interactivity.
Resolution is about the same - Land Sat 7 and USGS 1m
Wow, this looks cool, but I'm using a shared T1 and it's still going slow. So can you do things like zoom in on ski resorts?
IMHO, this is one federal program worth spending my money for.
Yea I just checked it out, but will pass cause of the size (260MB). But looks nifty.
bump
bttt
Dloading now
***So can you do things like zoom in on ski resorts?***
Yep. USGS 1M resolution (1 pixel = 1 meter I believe).
I can see my back yard (but not my dog!)
bookmark for the faster computer
BTTT for a buddy of mine...
Too cool ping
I need to use this to locate and plan the hikes in some Escalante Canyons. Terra Server was my last hope and it disappeared.
reference bump
Recommended Specifications
Windows 2000, XP Home, or XP Professional
Intel Pentium 3 1 ghz or AMD Athlon or higher
256 MB of RAM
3D Graphics Card
nVidia GeForce 2 Ultra
ATI Radeon 7500
Intel Extreme Graphics 2
DSL / Cable connection or faster
2 GB of disk space
I will download after midnight.
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