NASA WorldWind

Just thought that some of you might be interested in this.<br><br>worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

I don't know if this was posted yet, but it is a really cool application from NASA that allows for the seemless access to lots of geographic info in a great package. It is huge and requires good computer hardware and DSL.

The geological sat. data is good enough resolution to show traces of hiking trails. The third party plugins can and will likely allow telemetry data such as snow depths and ppt. rates to be displayed.

I haven't figured out everything about this in just the first couple of hours use, but it was sure cool flying into and throught the St. Helens crater! Wish the data were updated daily.

My fear is this puppy will become so popular that usage will eventually swamp the servers and then make it useless to everyone. Hope not.

I won't say any more, just check it out for youselves.
Alan

I've been playing with it a for a couple of days now -- this is a very cool program -- at least it is for me with a very high speed net connection. USGS orthophotos my favorite mtns in the PNW are particularly awesone!

I do like those images. I especially enjoy going to my favorite ski areas virtually. Boy if they could include coverage of the whole country with the resolution of the Urban satellite, wow!<br><br>Also, being able to save the screen shots is valuable. I think that for illustration purposes taking a screen shot of an area displayed at a 45 degree perspective and saving it with my photos from a particular route is invaluable when showing the photos to friends and family.<br><br>This use would become even more useful if someone wrote a means by which you could draw a route on the image, such as you can to with Topo!, and when simulating relief, have the route display on the surface.<br><br>Still haven't figured out how to get the transparent USGS topo map to overlay the ortho photos.<br><br>Alan

Alan, wife has been yelling at Daniel and me to get off this computer for two days now! Thanks. I've been able to create something similar to those climbing cards we used to use, but additionally have the same projection of the topo right next to it. This stuff is amazing.<br><br>There go the personal discovery zones! <br><br> Last night we went to the Sandwich Islands.

Great Dave, tell her to blame it on me!<br><br>Just don't let the virtual travels interfere with the real thing!<br><br>Would you know if it is possible to draw on the pictures? I suppose that importing the screen shots into a draw application could do it, I just think it might not look good.<br><br>Alan

Hah, no, I use a red pen after its printed! Pretty low-brow.<br><br>Hey is it OK if I post a .jpg on your thread- to give an example? Let me know if its not OK and I'll remove it. But here's Chinook Pass to Dewey Lk. The actual resolution is much better than this .jpg. I made this for a Cub Scout trip I'm taking Daniel on:<br><br>

Dave,<br><br>That is one option, but the nice thing about Topo! is that the drawn route gets saved. With WW, many of the images are saved in a cache on the hard drive, and it would be trivial for a developer to cause the drawn image to be saved in cache. The caching is why, when returning to a region, the images appear faster than the first time visit.<br><br>Check out the support web page for WW. There is a frenzy of activity in the development of plugins for this thing. You can now get Mars images on this and one the high res pictures from the European surveyor get published, the images may be better from our nearest neighbor planet than what we have now.<br><br>By the way, I downloaded a plug in for arial photos (from aircraft) that has higher resolution than the Ortho or Urban. Unfortunately they only cover parts of NY state, not much use for us here.<br><br>Alan<br><br>