NASA World Wind
Posted by Bug-E on April 2nd, 2005
NASA’s World Wind is an amazing little program. OK, so it’s not little, weighing in at over 170Mb, but if you have any kind of broadband internet connection, get this now… (Also of note is that to appreciate the full effect of this app, you really should have a reasonable graphics card, anything from a Geforce 2 Ultra up should suffice.)
You can find it at http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
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.
That’s what it says on their website. It’s true! You can rotate, tilt, and zoom around the earth, viewing the terrain as if you are right there… I managed to zoom in so far into my neighbourhood, that I managed to see my street! It has up-to-date placenames, country borders, etc.
No words can explain the wonderous visuals you can see with this program. If you have sufficient bandwidth available, the app will download updated lists of their “Visualisation Studio”, which enables the app to animate some really awesome visuals. (Unfortunately, stuck on a 56k dialup makes for rather slow updates…) Amongst the animations include atmospheric effects, sun-earth interactions, etc.
It is only available for Windows, and as of this writing they just released version 1.3.1.
OK, so why is this newsworthy to even mention? Well, other than the fact that this is an amazing tool to play with, it’s absolutely free, and it is part of NASA’s Open Source Software program!
Don’t take my word for it, go download it, and see for yourself.
-Aubrey
Update 2005-10-27: There’s a new version of Nasa’s World Wind V1.3.3.1 for download. A couple of bugfix, a bunch of new features. Go download it now.