I just had the chance to install and play with Nasa World Wind. It proves to be quite an alternative to the famous Google Earth in some ways. This is a program that will allow you to zoom in on any place you want on Earth, but also Venus, Mars, Jupiter…even the Moon.

You can select from various types of satellite map images, this would be very useful for anyone who’s into geology, geography etc. But you can also do much more, such as downloading live weather maps, which would be interesting for anyone into meteorology. It uses Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data and high resolution LandSat imagery. Yes…this is a little more technical than Google Earth!

It has a similiar interface as Google Earth in some ways, such as being able to click and drag to spin the globe to the desired position. You can zoom in and out with the mousewheel,or by double clicking. You can select the map type you’d like to see from a menu on the top. Hint: The landsat one is the one to choose if you wanna zoom in on photo’s of streets, etc.

On many levels, World Wind is good for scientific, educational and research purposes. For driving directions, local information, exploring and other recreational activities, Google Earth might be a better options, as this program might be a little too scientific for most people.

You can check out much more info and download it completely free from the NASA site here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 5:24 am and is filed under Developer, Freeware, Fun, Information Management, Internet, Main, Social Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.