WorldWind - Very Cool Free 3D Globe From NASA

[Diplo]

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.

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.

Whilst it's not cutting-edge 3D, it's still very impressive and also good fun and educational, too. Being open-source (using .NET) you can also get the source-code too. It also has lots of extra features, too:

http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/features.html

 

[Sxotty]

Dude that is cool

 

[tEd]

can't connect to server

 

[The549]

That's awesome!

 

[Kaotik]

okay, wtf is "Managed DirectX 9"?
I didn't install it and now this just gives me error "worldwind.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience"

 

[hiostu]

okay, wtf is "Managed DirectX 9"?
I didn't install it and now this just gives me error "worldwind.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience"

Managed Directx 9 is the .NET version of DirectX I believe.

 

[Killer-Kris]

Now this is pretty damn cool. I was just expecting a simple sphere with hi-res satelight maps, but at least according to the web page it has some pretty spiffy features.

 

[Diplo]

okay, wtf is "Managed DirectX 9"?
I didn't install it and now this just gives me error "worldwind.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience"

You should have installed it Managed DirectX is basically an extension to DirectX specifically for software written in .NET (which utilises managed code; ie. code that automatically handle memory management). Installing managed DX9 won't effect or replace your existing DX9 install. In fact, it's likely that at some point in the future you're going to need to install it, so just get it over with

For more about managed DX9 see this.

 

[hoom]

Cool
I've been wanting something like this for ages.
Sooner or later a descendant of this will allow people to watch live satelite feeds at like 10cm resolution & stuff 8)

 

[Silent_One]

Nice. I've even found my house!
Reminds me of Trera Server (sp?).
Also kind of reminds me of Partiview, from the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. (www.haydenplanetarium.org) Check it out and travel 3D space!

 

[darfinno]

cool thing!

 

[Kaotik]

okay, wtf is "Managed DirectX 9"?
I didn't install it and now this just gives me error "worldwind.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience"

You should have installed it Managed DirectX is basically an extension to DirectX specifically for software written in .NET (which utilises managed code; ie. code that automatically handle memory management). Installing managed DX9 won't effect or replace your existing DX9 install. In fact, it's likely that at some point in the future you're going to need to install it, so just get it over with

For more about managed DX9 see this.

okay, time to reinstall world wind then 8)

 

[Diplo]

PS...

There's a good FAQ for World Wind available here.

For other info check out the forums.

Note the LandSat servers are suffering some bandwidth problems but these are being sorted out.

 

[Kaotik]

still no go here, same error.

i uninstalled it, and then installed it and this time said yes for managed directx, tried to run, got error, booted, still got error.

running r9800 pro downclocked a lot (pos card i received when i rma'd my old one, rma'ing this one soon too), cat 4.9, directx9.0c + managed directx, .NET framework 2.0 beta, winxp pro sp2

 

[Diplo]

Ummm, I wonder if it's a problem with the NET framework 2.0 beta? I've not installed that myself, so don't know whether it's entirely backwards compatible with 1.1 or not. Perhaps you could try the forum ?

 

[euan]

Nice. I've even found my house!
Reminds me of Trera Server (sp?).
Also kind of reminds me of Partiview, from the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. (www.haydenplanetarium.org) Check it out and travel 3D space!

Tera server

pft! where's the Scotland, Wales, England borders?

 

[Vadi]

This great! I always wanted that! Btw. here are links to live satellite tracking (Java required) and earth and moon viewer (how they are lit by our sun).

 

[Killer-Kris]

So anyone find anything interesting in there? Carrier Battlegroups, WMDs in Iraq?! I'm currently trying to load Groom Lake but it seems to be refusing to load the USGS 1m data, so it would seem it's a popular area.

Edit: Groom Lake seems to refuse to load, though I did find an SR-71 at Edwards Airforce base. Pretty neat stuff I think.

 

[Diplo]

So anyone find anything interesting in there? Carrier Battlegroups, WMDs in Iraq?! I'm currently trying to load Groom Lake but it seems to be refusing to load the USGS 1m data, so it would seem it's a popular area.

The colour 1m data seems to only cover major urban cities in the US, unfortunately. However, I saw on the forums that some people had the black'n'white USGS data for Area 51 in Nevada

 

[euan]

can't connect to server

if you mean the landsat sever, yes:

However the sky at night pictures work, and USGS not that it's any use. :?