Great Program From NASA

[Gregg Lengling]

NASA has this free program you can download and play around with.

Neat program!
It lets you go to any area of the world and then zoom in and around - almost like flying.

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

I just ran across this the other day.  The file is 184M in length, took about 10 minutes to download on RR.

You can zoom into any area of the world.
Left click and hold and you can rotate the globe
Right click and hold - move the mouse back & forth and you can change the altitude/attitude.
When you click on the "Landsat 7 Visible tab, after going online, the program will load more detailed images if you are zoomed in sufficiently.
A red line outlines the area beiing updated.  (Remember you must be online to do the updates).

[StarvingForHDTV]

That sounds exciting, thanks.

[StarvingForHDTV]

The program is very intense.

[Bebop]

Not as intense, but more useful.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=5300s+howell+ave,+53207&t=k&hl=en

[jkane]

Need a supercomputer to use it!  Also it's very micky$oft's latest software ingrained (requires directx 9.c and 1.1 .net).  No wonder it's such a dog to use.  My computer is a Athelon 1.8Gig CPU with half a gig of memory and very fast mirrored hard drives.  It still takes forever to zoom in or out.

Gonna have to play with it some more.  I do like the globe concept though.

[Gregg Lengling]

Need a supercomputer to use it!  Also it's very micky$oft's latest software ingrained (requires directx 9.c and 1.1 .net).  No wonder it's such a dog to use.  My computer is a Athelon 1.8Gig CPU with half a gig of memory and very fast mirrored hard drives.  It still takes forever to zoom in or out.

Gonna have to play with it some more.  I do like the globe concept though.

I'm running a 1.8gig P4 with 1/2g of memory and don't have a problem.  The biggest lag in zooming is that it is downloading the info via the net as you would need a few terrabytes of storage to have it all on hand.

[StarvingForHDTV]

A decent and modern video card is important.

[JRel]

I agree with Starving that this program is intense.  

For the first half hour of playing around, all I knew to do was look from the top straight down, like with google maps.  Then I figured out how to roll back and look more horizontally and I was quite impressed.  I was surprised to see that the different elevations of the buildings, such as sky scrapers, were included.  Once they get higher res images, I will be totally blown away.

I was running on a 1GHz Athlon w/ 512mb ram with no problems or big delays.  I do have a newer video card, though.

[kevbeck122]

I'm running an Athlon 1.6 downclocked to 1.2 (having problems at 1.6... time to upgrade )... 512 MB RAM.. top of the line video card from ~3 years ago.  It's a little shaky and uses 100% of the CPU, but it generally works fine zooming.

I do like Google Maps better for closer images, but all in all this is very nice.