NASA World Wind

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NASA World Wind

Image:Worldwind.png Screenshot of World Wind showing Blue Marble Next Generation layer
Maintainer:	NASA Ames Research Center
Stable release:	1.3.5 (May 12, 2006) _[+/-]
Preview release:	1.3.6/1.4 RC1 (November 2, 2006) _[+/-]
OS:	Windows 2000, XP
Use:	Virtual globe
License:	NASA Open Source license v1.3
Website:	worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

USGS Urban Ortho-Imagery of Huntington Beach, California in older version of World Wind (1.2)

Image:Kat fl.jpg

Image:Moon worldwind.jpg

Image:Ww mars olympus.jpg

World Wind is a virtual globe developed by NASA for use on personal computers running Microsoft Windows. The program overlays NASA satellite imagery and United States Geological Survey aerial photography on a 3D model of the Earth, Moon and Mars. (Venus and Jupiter are also available in the File menu, including the moons Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto through the program overlays, all these come without 3D elevation data)

The user interacts with the selected planet by rotating it and zooming in and out. Overlays of five million placenames, political boundaries and lines of latitude/longitude are included. The software also provides the ability to browse maps and other imagery on the internet using the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service, import ESRI shapefiles and placemarks from kml/kmz files.

1 Datasets available
- 1.1 Earth
- 1.2 Extraterrestrial datasets
2 Specifications
3 Add-ons and plugins
4 Forks and clones
5 Competition
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Datasets available

Low resolution Blue Marble datasets are included with the initial download; as a user zooms in to certain areas, additional high resolution data is downloaded from the NASA servers. The size of all currently available data sets is about 4.6 terabytes.

[edit] Earth

Image/terrain datasets:

Blue Marble Next Generation imagery
Landsat 7 imagery
- NLT Landsat (Visible & Pseudo Color)
- Geocover 1990 & 2000 (pseudo)
- OnEarth (visible & pseudo)
USGS imagery
- Digital Ortho (monochrome declassified NRO KH-11 spy satellite photographs)
- Urban Area Ortho (montaged color aerial photography of many major US metropolitan areas)
- Topographic maps
Zoomit! imagery (community produced layer)
- LINZ (montaged color aerial photography of New Zealand)
- GSWA (Topographic and geological maps of Western Australia)
- US imagery (montaged color aerial photography of many major US metropolitan areas)
SRTM+ terrain data (includes bathymetry)

Animated data layers:

[edit] Extraterrestrial datasets

[edit] Moon

Clementine (40xx - Colour, 30xx - Greyscale)
Shaded Elevation Map

[edit] Mars

MOC (Mars Global Surveyor - Mars Orbiter Camera)
MOLA (MGS - Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter)
THEMIS (Mars Odyssey - Thermal Emission Imaging System)
MDIM (Viking - Mars Digital Image Model)

[edit] Venus

Magellan Imaging Radar (Color/Greyscale)
Shaded Elevation Map

[edit] Specifications

Baseline resolutions
- 500 m (Blue Marble Next Generation)
- 15 m (Landsat imagery; except for polar areas)
Typical high resolutions
- U.S.
  - USGS Digital Ortho: 1 m (grayscale; near full coverage)
  - USGS Urban Area Ortho: 0.25 m [1]
  - Zoomit!: 0.15 m to 1 m Zoomit!
- New Zealand
  - Zoomit! (from LINZ data): 2.5 m (colour and grayscale)
- Western Australia
  - Zoomit! (from GSWA): 250K surface geology mosaic, 250K topographic data, Magnetic Intensity, Bouger Gravity
- South Africa
  - Zoomit!: Robben Island 0.5 m
Altitude resolution:
- U.S.: 30 m (1 arcsecond; SRTM)
- Global: 90 m (3 arcsecond; SRTM [2])
Age:
- Some USGS aerial images were taken in the early 1990s.
- Landsat 7 images are all taken after 1999 (except for Geocover 1990).

[edit] Add-ons and plugins

Image:WW washington.png

World Wind can be expanded by using one of many add-ons - small extensions that add new functionality to the program.
Possible types of add-ons:

Point layers - simple XML files displaying placemarks (point of interest) as icons
One of these layers, Wikipedia[3], has icons with click-through links connected to Wikipedia. This example shows the Washington DC National Mall, with each ring representing a link to an article:
Trail layers - paths (routes, boundaries)
Place names - specific points (such as cities, hills and buildings) that are assigned text labels
Image layers - high resolution imagery for various places in the world
Scripts - files that control camera movement

Plugins are small programs written in C#, VB or J# which are loaded and compiled by World Wind at startup. Plug-in developers can add features to World Wind without changing the program's source code.

[edit] Forks and clones

WW2D is cross-platform, free and open-source application based on Java and OpenGL technologies and can be run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (x86 and amd64) and even Solaris SPARC. WW2D uses images from World Wind's servers.
- WW2D Plus One is an update to WW2D providing a 3D view.
Punt is a fork of the NASA World Wind project, and was started by two members of the free software community who had made contributions to World Wind. Punt was based on the code in World Wind 1.3.2, but its initial release has features not found in World Wind 1.3.2 or 1.3.3 (such as support for multiple languages). Currently, Punt is only available for Windows, but long term goals include a desire to move to a cross-platform solution.
Dapple is a fork of the NASA World Wind project, it is an Open Source project created by developers at GeoSoft. Dapple is aimed at GIS professionals, and has features aimed at them, such as easy addition WMS servers and a simpler UI very similar to Google Earth's.
SERVIR-VIZ is a customized version of World Wind developed by SERVIR

[edit] Competition

Google Earth, formerly called Keyhole, is a direct competitor to World Wind. The look and feel is quite similar. Both programs have high-resolution imagery in certain areas and others, not. While World Wind is open source (released under the terms of the NASA Open Source Agreement), Google Earth is closed source, with all its data (3D buildings, maps, street plans) and code being copyrighted.

Despite being open source, World Wind is still restricted to Windows (while Google Earth works on MacOS and Linux), relying on the .NET libraries and DirectX. Future versions of the program will be developed both in .NET and Java with JOGL. The new Java version will have a completely new architecture. The first Java, multiplatform release is scheduled for late 2006 [4]. Google has released a Mac OS X and a Linux version of Google Earth.

NASA World Wind will always remain free, and to date all add-ons and plugins are freely available. Google Earth has additional services such as GPS navigation, for which it charges.