What’s New in NASA World Wind 1.3.4 Beta
I finally found a wiki page with some info on the 1.3.4 beta. I’m not sure why this isn’t linked on the front page of the World Wind Central community portal. I want to find some time to play around with using World Wind with shapefiles and see how well it works as a Geographic Exploration System (I hate that term, but it seems to be gaining traction). Many of our clients can’t use Google Earth because of its license and I’m sure others will begin to run into that problem. World Wind might just be the solution and we’ll see how well it handles Shapefiles.
Oh and NASA World Wind 1.3.4 Beta 3 is out. Grab it while it is hot.
Do you mean your clients won’t pay for Google Earth Pro @ $400-600/yr (or less depending on volume)? I look at the value proposition for that basically being the value of the data they get for that price. In comparison to my consulting rates, they end up with a lot more value per $ from Google.
That said, I am enjoying playing around in WW today. It’s not the same experience as GE, but it has some interesting features.
Still no news on AGX? It’s been Q2 2006 for about 13 days…
Google Earth pro is way too expensive for them.
We aren’t talking about a few copies here.
Google Earth is so low on the priority that we don’t even bother to mention it anymore. Of course people have it installed on their desktops, but not a license that we can use.
The “New in 1.3.4″ will be on the front page when it is out of beta. I asked that too yesterday. There will also be at least 3 new tours for 1.3.4 (a tour of all of 1.3.4’s features and a tour for Mars and Venus).
Matt: You also have to consider that due to how GE works.. some locations won’t even allow it to be installed because of security issues… let alone the licensing issues.
Chad- I’d be interested to learn of any security issues you have uncovered. For some of the people I work with that run completely on their own intranet for whatever reasons, we have put the full GE enterprise suite into place. Obviously, that’s not the right choice for most people, but it is an incredibly powerful end to end solution if you own lots of data.
On the subject of cost…I think a big challenge for products that stream lots of imagery to lots of users is bandwidth cost. You really need a distributed cache that sits close to your users to keep those costs under control.
Well, I know for sure that it came down from the upper command of the National Guard that GE is not allowed to be used and that it is even blocked from accessing the internet (was forwarded the email when asked to do a tour for the national guard on using WW for their needs). I have heard from word of mouth several other agencies have done similar and some companies have done the same.
I am not sure on the paid versions of GE.. but you can have one central cache for all you users with World Wind. And the cache doesn’t get up and walk away or is limited to a set size.
Following on Chad’s comment on the WW cache. The cache is optionally encrypted and fully mobile ie can work in Offline mode hence u can have data in the field as well with a drinking straw connection where u only upload field collected data up and dont download any imagey.
For a device which can do this and is tough enough look here.
http://whatnick.blogspot.com/2006/04/ww2d-terrain-and-7za.html
We developed our own version of WW, we called it SERVIR Viz which is focus in Mesoamerica, and we are using heavily ArcIMS with the WMS connector. Our customized version includes many plugins like fire alerts, floods alerts, Weather forecast using WRF and MM5 and other stuff.