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Hello World - Nasa World Wind

post #1 of 4
11/6/06 at 8:50am
Thread Starter 
Download and give Nasa World Wind a try. Just an amazing piece of free software to view the world. Note you'd need a relatively decent computer and video card to get the magic working. Very hypnotic scrolling around the continent of North America...and a bit Douglas Adams-ish when you find your hometown and zoom the fuck out with your mouse scroll wheel.

Quote:
from the official site:
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.
Quote:
System Requirements:
Windows 2000, or XP
Intel Pentium 3, 1 GHz, or AMD Athlon or higher
256 MB of RAM
3D Graphics Card
See video card compatibility list at http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Video_Card_Compatibility

DSL / Cable connection or faster
2 GB of disk space
I've only been toying around with the basic stuff not diving into any of the included apps or the maps for Mars or the Moon.
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post #2 of 4
11/6/06 at 8:58am
Quote:
NASA World Wind leverages Microsoft .NET technology for rapid development and to easily access open standards such as XML, WMS, and other graphics standards. Real-time 3D graphics are driven by DirectX allowing a wide base of compatibility with accelerated video hardware.

Primary data sources come from NASA, and TerraServer-USA of Microsoft Research.
I guess that explains why it's only available for Windoze.
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post #3 of 4
11/6/06 at 12:07pm
Thread Starter 
the rendering of the mountains is pretty realistic. I have the elevation exaggeration set to 2x which made the output look realistic. See the attached file....(seabass eat your heart out)..."What I woke up to every day"

also attached is a plain jane view of the earth with weather turned on.
LL
LL
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post #4 of 4
11/6/06 at 12:28pm
So random, I found this the other day while I was researching GIS systems. It's pretty cool that it's all open source and supposedly there are people working on a Java version.

I had hoped it would be an accurate 3d system like ArcGIS can be but it seems mostly like it's a 2D map with exaggerated elevations.
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