NASA Releases World Viewer

Klatoo55 writes "Nasa has released a comprehensive world viewing tool that allows you to zoom from planetary resolution down to where you can pick out individual streets. Really cool, but it needs a good internet connection and a decent graphics card. There's all sorts of interesting features, such as the ability to tilt your view for a flight-sim like experience and a data display feature that shows current natural disasters, political boundaries, weather patterns, and landmarks on the Earth's surface, all while providing a dynamic satellite's eye view of the planet."

Chalk another one up for Neil Stepehenson.

[SuiteSisterMary]

"YOU ARE HERE."

It certainly must be comprehensive...

[tcopeland]

...since it's a 259 MB download.

What a perfect (and missed) opportunity for NASA to use BitTorrent [bittorrent.com] instead of a huge zip file. Ah well.

Re:Takes a hefty chunk of hardware

[ObjetDart]

Those are hefty requirements? Just about any Windows box sold in the last 4 years would meet these requirements.

Re:A threat to our security?

[Izago909]

Everything is a threat to national security. There are a half dozen other free websites that offer nearly the same services as this one. Soon, the EU will have its own version of GPS which can be accessed by the public. If someone really wants to kill others, they will find a way regardless. Has anyone noticed that most security implementations after the attacks tend to make people feel safer without making them truly safer? No security is better than a false sense of security; at least people would be on their toes instead of walking around oblivious.

Re:A threat to our security?

[Anonymous Coward]

No worse than Terraserver, or all the other sources of aerial photographs. Or maps. Or just fucking walking around a city looking for easy targets.

And I doubt any terrorist is going to bother with a sophisticated GPS-guided missile when a simple truck will do.

Nice troll.

Re:Bastards...

[stratjakt]

They released the source, so get to work porting it and quit whining.

Snow Crash reference

[perlchild]

Am I the only one who sees a Stephenson's Snow Crash reference in this?

Re:Can we..

[Anonymous Luddite]

World Wind requires DirectX 9b and the .NET Runtime environment to be installed. These have been included in the World Wind installer /SNIP

I know it would have been a hog anyway, but I don't think they did themselves any favours on the download size.

Re:Commercial site (free usage)

[p3d0]

Hey, the World Trade Center is still in there.

Big Bro

[rootsrockrebel]

If we have access to something like this, just imagine what governments can see...