NASA World Wind 1.3.4 Beta
Yea its been out a couple of days but it is news to me. You can now download the new 1.3.4 Beta from NASA’s servers. I don’t see a change log, but I’m sure there is one somewhere. Tell me now, which looks better? Google Earth or NASA World Wind?
Google Earth
NASA World Wind
Yea, I’ll take World Wind thank you very much.
Definitely agree with your assessment at this zoom level- depends if you want to look at clouds or earth!
I guess one trick about Google Earth is that there is just one big mosaic image. Each point on the earth has one elevation and one color associated with it (with the obvious exception of overlays). Putting the WW data into GE…might not look so hot when you zoom in!
Don’t worry, you can turn off the clouds if you wish. I’m totally loving World Wind…
Thank you for downloading worldwind James. I wish it would get as much publicity as Google Earth does or ESRI spins for the new Globe Viewer. There are tonnes of plugins which can be installed on the fly. There is a KMLImporter too, please look at ShockFire’s blog.
cheers,
what_nick.
Thanks for the link. I’ve been hearing all kinds of stuff about World Wind. I’m new to the whole GIS world, but I’m quickly finding out that it’s a fascinating place.
James, you’re not being fair. Here’s a screenshot of the same view in Google Earth with Blue Marble NG and global clouds turned on (and scaled to the same width as your screenshots):
http://www.gearthblog.com/images/geblue.jpg
I don’t know frank, that blue marble is default on World Wind and not on Google Earth. Seems like a fair comparison to me.
True, the default is with blue marble for WW in its current release. But, the point is GE has the ability to show the same view without hacking. Who cares if their default view just happens to provide the fastest access to their vastly superior database of higher resolution satellite and aerial photos?
OK, by the same argument I could say World Wind has the same imagery just by adding some simple plugins and WMS servers.
Heh…that’s really funny. All someone would have to do is buy the licensing rights to multi-terabyte image databases, georeference all those hundreds of thousands of images, set up servers all over the world with the ability to support tens of millions of users, build the support infrastructure, and then it could be the same as GE. Ok, I see what you mean. That’s simple!
A key difference between WW and GE - the license restrictions. If you read the first couple of paragraphs of the GE free viewer license, you’ll see that ONLY non-commercial / business uses are permitted! WW does not have any of these restrictions.
Although I think GE is probably “slicker” than WW at the moment, I can legally use WW for work purposes…
Actually its not that hard in World Wind thanks to the plugin architecture.
Licensing: You can buy a license for GE commercial/govt use. It’s pretty cheap compared to the cost of the data you get to use.
WMS: You think WMS servers are going to be able to stream imagery like GE? Good luck!
Plugins and scripting are probably the major deficiency in GE today. I think we’ll be seeing those before too long.
see that is the problem I see with Google Earth and why everyone should be concerned. Cities are turning over their data to Google leaving out everyone else. If I wanted to create my own application for this imagery I couldn’t because of Google’s license. If these cities required Google to give out the data free, then I’d be fine with it.
It is just one more aspect of Google that we are turning our lives over to.
As for WMS servers working as well as Google Earth, you are spot on about that, but at least they are sharing data. I can’t use Google’s data in my applications. It is the price I have to pay like it or not.
I’m so sick and tired of Google being a data hog.
I for one am very happy to see this Virtual Earth plugin. If microsoft can continue to give us great data and add some more from around the world, then we’ll be able to walk away from Google Earth forever.
Hey fellas, remember the days of tracking down DEM data, downloading Landsat from the U of Maryland server, figuring out which honkin’ dataset to reproject and hoping your machine didn’t bluescreen during the draping process??
I do, and those are not fond memories.
So let me enjoy having multiple globes to work with….
you ever heard about “Punt” ? Punt is a Open Source multi-language Windows desktop application that allows the user to view the terrain of any world in 3D. Using open standards Punt can make use of data from the Internet combined with local data in common GIS-compatible formats. Punt started as a fork from the NASA World Wind project back in august 2005 - leaded by two developers (Bjorn Reppen[norway] and Dave Patton[canada]). Punt 1.4.0 Beta 1 (latest release) is fully compatible with World Wind’s Cache (nice to share the cached imagery) and FileSystem and has some very useful features which i miss in GE as well as in NASA’s World Wind. some highlights are: multilingual interface (en, de, fr, no so far), free configurable cache and filesystem (sharing cache or/and filesystem in a LAN fe.), improved code quality (compared to World Wind), no lead of NASA in this SF project (WW is open source - but isn’t open development), ……
for more informations about the Punt Project visit Punts Homepage (http://punt.sourceforge.net) and/or Punt’s Sourceforge Projectpage (http://sourceforge.net/projects/punt/)
Just in response to the speed issues. GE doesnot provide sharp imagery all over the screen and anywhere except in the centre it looks Yucky.If you want a streaming sevice that’s fast over a WMS join the Web Tile Service mailing list.In the short term clustering and load balancing the WMS and putting a caching proxy in front of it solves most of the speed issues once the cache builds up+plus u need bandwidth.And did I mention that GE does not operate in offline mode.Setting this up is not rocket science ask all the data guys working on terabytes of worldwind data.And can u add DEM’s to GoogleEarth. If you have figured that out let me know.
Wow and I thought GE was cool and now I stumble across World Wind. As far as image quality is concerned there is no comparison. I am currently trying to get anyone at GE to talk to me about commercial licencing of GE for use in a multinational website. Do any of you guys know if they are into this type of thing? Do you know if the creators of World Wind would licence it’s use as a navigational element on a multinationals website? Cheers
Its open source so there is no commercial license.
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind-nosa-1.3.html
Don’t know if I am allowed to plug a company but we at http://www.apogee.com.au commercially support worldwind and work on both the C# and Java versions.I am one of the contributors to Worldwind core.
If you need any commercial level support let us know.
plug away what_nick!
Hey Guys, Thanks for the info. I would love to have a chat with you what_nick! about possible commercial uses for WW. I guess I really need to know if what I am developing is feasable. What is the best way to hookup? I am in Vegas till Monday with work so if you want to email me my address is simonmchugh@iprimus.com.au
Cheers and hope to hear from you next week.
Hey,I just want to ask a question?
where i can find the C# source of nasa world wind? Thank you!
http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Source_code
Gives instructions on coding etiquette.