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NASA Space Science

NASA World Wind 1.4 Released With Trailer 117

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fun-toys dept.
Bull_UK writes "As many of you probably already know NASA had to shift it's priorities to the upcoming Java version of World Wind, leaving 1.4 effectively orphaned, but the Open Source community came together and with a lot of hard work we were able to finish what Chris Maxwell started. Some of the new things which differentiate the new World Wind from the competition are the amazing new visual effects, including HDR, check out the video for some examples. Remember this virtual globe has never had the same goals as Google Earth, if you just want to see your house stick with GE, although many areas have high resolution as good and sometimes better than GE. World Wind is aimed at education and science, all the default imagery is copyright free, you don't need to purchase a license to redistribute the imagery and there are no pro or expert versions to buy, you can happily use World Wind at work or school without fear of any lawyers confiscating your research."
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NASA World Wind 1.4 Released With Trailer More

NASA World Wind 1.4 Released With Trailer

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  • Hmm, time to rewrite the applet as a flash plugin. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:47PM (#18017550) Journal

    The data I had for hostip.info [gornall.net] was 1-pixel-per-kilometre. This new data is twice that resolution, and if I combine this new data with the soon-to-be-open-source 3d engine in Flash [papervision3d.org], I think it'd be really cool. Geolocate yourself or anyone else by their IP, then zoom around that location in 3d :-)

    Sounds like a fun thing to put together - maybe this weekend for the 2D stuff, and as soon as the 3D engine is open-source, I'll include that :-)

    As always with this sort of thing, it's getting hold of the data that's the hard part - kudos to those giving it away free to research, education, and me :-)

    Simon
    • Why use something nasty like flash when you already have a java applet to use in web browsers?
      • Because initialising the java VM takes (relatively) forever, and is ugly; because then I can integrate with a very capable 3D engine written in Flash.

        Simon

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          Good point - but what about things like office environments where flash is disabled by default, people like me that just don't like annoying flash animations appearing and locking up slow machines so have it turned off and people like amd64 linux users who have to do a fair bit of mucking about to get flash to work? Java works well, is (was?) far better optimised than flash, has less security problems and is cross platform. I'm not convinced rewriting the same thing in flash would be an improvement - a re

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by eyeye ( 653962 )
            Applets are dead, get over it. I am a java programmer but don't like java applets either.
    • Just no.

      Their demos lag visibly on my beast of a gaming machine. Probably not significantly, but it's there. And that's with their demos... no wonder it's called "papervision", everything looks like origami!

      Wake me up when we have a browser plugin that actually uses hardware 2D/3D acceleration. Like, say, OpenGL. Because this is just ridiculous.
      • Interesting, on my Mac Pro (X1900 card), they're fluid and really responsive.

        Simon.
        • Well, it is, I suppose -- for Flash.

          No, really, it's not something I'd complain about, except that these demos really are pretty simple, and I shouldn't be getting any lag at all. Quake 4 performs about as well on this system, on High settings, so you can see why that's annoying.

          I could show you another benchmark, too, that I'm curious to see someone replicate on a non-Linux version of Flash. YouTube Flash uses some 50% of my 1.8 ghz CPU running a video fullscreen. Save that video with the Firefox VideoDown

  • So.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lithdren ( 605362 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:50PM (#18017572)
    How long before we get a real time world generated for a game like GTA, that uses maps like this to allow you to literaly travel all around the world?

    This sort of stuff is so amazing to me, never before has mankind had the ability to get maps of areas with this much detail in such vast areas. I really wonder what past generations would think.

    But, I still want to play GTA and rampage my own neiborhood. :P

    • There's a lot of three-dimensional content to be generated before that can happen.

      If I knew a bunch of brilliant graphics-analysis programmers, I'd want to put together a startup to do mapping for video games and other driving simulations. You need to capture rough geometry and texture map data for everything you drive by. The system needs to recognize signs (probably best done with a combination of lidar and radar) and make textures for them, too. Finally, it's got to know where the vehicle is (DGPS?)

      • I dont think it needs to be even that complicated. I'd want the layouts of the roads accurate for such a thing, but the rest is rather subjective.

        Sure, know where the houses are, and roughly how big, but they dont need to be identical. Using data from nice satalite images would be enough. You'd want it to dynamically generate property, people, parked cars, etc. Being close, or even identical, would be great, but its no requirement.

        You'd need to run the images through a computer and geographic inform

        • Sure, know where the houses are, and roughly how big, but they dont need to be identical. Using data from nice satalite images would be enough. You'd want it to dynamically generate property, people, parked cars, etc. Being close, or even identical, would be great, but its no requirement.

          On the routes I'm talking about, most things are wholly or partially covered by trees. Most of the other roads I'd like to drive are very poorly imaged.

          The most important things are the roadway, more or less accurate tree

      • How about something like this [iee.org] ( PDF! ).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fred_A ( 10934 )
        Didn't we all want to play a good 3D version of "Where in the World is Drinkypoo" ?

        Driving around with a truck shooting lasers all over the place to do a good 3D scan of its surroundings might be a bit problematic though...

    • Re:So.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Solder Fumes ( 797270 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @11:29PM (#18020250)
      "But, I still want to play GTA and rampage my own neiborhood[sic]. :P"

      I'd like to rampage around your neighborhood too...definitely stop by your mom's place for some hot coffee.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thuktun ( 221615 )

      But, I still want to play GTA and rampage my own neiborhood.
      All we need then is a way to project features of the game into reality. Sounds like a horrible SeaQuest time-travel episode. [tv.com]

  • PC only? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:51PM (#18017580) Homepage Journal
    It's a serious bummer when the download page only has a windows executable.

    Is there a Mac of Linux version available or are we left out in the cold?

    • Re:PC only? (Score:5, Informative)

      by the linux geek ( 799780 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:53PM (#18017608)
      No. World Wind is based on the .NET framework, so you might have some success with Mono, but no native Mac or Linux version is available at this time.

      • Re:PC only? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by withak ( 40799 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @06:56PM (#18018202) Homepage
        Supposedly the only thing that in WW won't compile in Mono is the DirectX stuff. There has been talk of an OpenGL port for ages; no one has ever actually started though.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 )
          Maybe it would be easier to develop an OpenGL display to replace the DirectX one than port the whole damn thing to Java / Java3D.
          • OpenGL won't give you multithreaded graphics devices, something WW uses pretty heavily. If you're going to restructure the code to get around that, you might as well port it to Java...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by spitzak ( 4019 )
              Huh? You must mean something like multithreaded graphics *contexts*. OpenGL has long supported many contexts drawing to the same surface, each from a different thread. A context cannot be shared between threads, though.

              Still not sure what a multithreaded "context" means, though. Adding a lock around every graphics call is NOT "multithreading" (actually Microsoft is somewhat better than Unix in this respect, take a look at the horrible way libc added a lock around every single stdio call and thus killed it's
              • Sorry, that should be "multithreaded device access". I was quoting from this entry [worldwindcentral.com] linked from the FAQ:

                one small but critical element for the use of DirectX over OpenGL, multi-threaded graphics device access.

                Not sure exactly how DirectX (now Direct3D) implements its thread-safe layer, but I think the important question is how well will the new Java version work? I haven't played with Java3D much, but I doubt it's integrated with hardware as closely as DirectX is, so I can't imagine its performance is going to be comparable.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )
                  Direct3D has always been a subset of DirectX. One is not synonomous with the other.

                  DirectX = Direct3D + DirectDraw + DirectPlay + DirectInput, more or less.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by spitzak ( 4019 )
                  I don't think that guy has any idea what he is talking about. The Windows IDE and DirectX support C++ quite well, DirectX works *better* with C++ than C#, and most games are C++, and far more DirectX is written in C++ than C#. It is pretty insane to take a program already in C++ and convert it to C#. This is so bogus that I kind of find it hard to accept anything else he says.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by withak ( 40799 )
            The reason for the upcoming Java version was that the funding for the .NET version dried up, and another govt. organization (another internal NASA group? DoD? they won't say...) provided a big pile of money for the development of a Java version. Apparently Sun is involved too.
    • it's a .net program written in c# -- i don't think you'll be seeing a linux version unless mono has come along farther than i had thought.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jaxle ( 193331 )
      If you read the faq...

      System Requirements

              * Windows 2000, XP, or 2003
              * 3D graphics card (see Video Card Compatibility)
              * Internet connection
              * Sorry, no support for Linux or Macintosh yet

    • Re:PC only? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MaggieL ( 10193 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:57PM (#18017648)
      Is there a Mac of Linux version available or are we left out in the cold?

      That would appear to be one reason that (as the OP said) NASA is moving to World Wind Java [earthissquare.com].

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by miscz ( 888242 )

      Windows only. It's using .Net and DirectX so I wouldn't expect port anytime soon.

      offtopic:
      Jesus fuck, PC stands for personal computer, not Windows (hint: Apple commercials lie)

      Signed: Concerned PC with GNU/Linux operating system user

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by joto ( 134244 )

        Jesus fuck, PC stands for personal computer, not Windows (hint: Apple commercials lie)

        Yes, it's possible Jesus fucked. Maybe he was gay and fucked his disciples, maybe he fucked Maria Magdalena, who knows...

        Apart from that, while it's true that PC is short for personal computer, that doesn't mean that e.g. an office computer owned by the company can't be called a PC. According to this wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], IBM applied for a trademark for the term "Personal Computer" in 1981 (three years after Apple had use

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by azav ( 469988 )
      OMG, this is seriously beautiful.

      IMHO, a great competitor to Google Earth.

      Great imagery. Fast response

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by skoaldipper ( 752281 )
      I too wanted this juicy bit for my linux machine. I found something related [ww2d.org] but haven't tried it yet. It says it supports NASA WW data sets.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by HansWurst ( 1029602 )
      As somebody already said, there is a java client [ww2d.org] which uses the same NASA imagery as WW. Also very interesting imho is that the developer of gaia [sourceforge.net], the once open-sourced client for GE, switched his code to use the NASA data after being shut down by google [slashdot.org]. Gaia uses the sdl [libsdl.org] library and therefore should compile on any system sdl supports (from www.libsdl.org: "SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gk4 ( 547670 )
      The .exe installer checks for a .NET prerequisite. Google Earth remains the leader on Linux and Mac. http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html [google.com]

  • So what is so great about 1.4? First of all it is written using .NET 2.0 which allows for some cool new features
    Like?
    • Slight OT tangent.

      This reminds me of one of my college professors, who for some reason thought Microsoft could do no wrong. Every day he would come into class and say stuff like, "I was looking at the first public beta of .NET 3.0 that Microsoft recently released, and I've gotta say, it's pretty slick." Funny thing, though, he would never expand on what the "slick" part was...

      When pressed, he always answered with something about "metadata improvements" and "XML", as well as stipulating "you could go look

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by withak ( 40799 )
      I don't know about cool new features, but it opens up the field of developers quite a bit. Switching to .NET 2.0 means it compiles in the free Visual Studio Express now, and between VSexpress and C#, development (on the WW core, or just on plugins) is idiotproof that someone with little or no coding experience (me) could poke around and figure out enough about how stuff worked to be able to contribute.
    • I can see you've never spent much time using Microsoft tools. "Written using .NET 2.0" means that is COMPILES using the .NET 2.0 tools, which the "Written using .NET 1.4" no longer does.

  • Whoa -- useful for design ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mr_luc ( 413048 ) * on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:54PM (#18017624)
    I noticed that the kinds of infographic abilities shown here: http://www.dynagis.net/gallery_screenshots/ [dynagis.net] are now free, as the plugin that provides them is now CC licensed. (more info here: http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Add-on:DYNAGI S_Golden_Pearl [worldwindcentral.com])

    THAT is pretty cool, actually. As someone often called on to do design tasks that straddle the line between infographic and visualization, I think I need to give WW another look. I never really considered it once Google Earth came out, because Google Earth was easier for whatever globehopping question I had. But being able to quickly do this kind of visualization ("uh, hey -- we need a picture of the population density of South Dakota, matching our company's color scheme, by tomorrow") should make my life a little easier.
  • So NASA is finishing off the World War? I thought NASA was into space and not time travel.
    • NASA is finishing off the World War?

      Who else has the capability to fight the last of the Space Nazi armada and the last of Japan's remaining Giant Space Robots?...

  • Ofiicial site (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

    (as apposed to the submitters Wiki - not that I'm ungrateful for his contributions and bringing this news to my attention)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bull_UK ( 944763 )
      I used the wiki as NASA don't update the official one very quickly, and as I made the build which was sent to NASA, that was on the wiki first too ;)

  • video? (Score:1)

    by qwp ( 694253 )
    am I missing something or the video references is really lacking a link?

  • World Wind Java (Score:5, Informative)

    by AnswerIs42 ( 622520 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @06:32PM (#18018018) Homepage
    World Wind Java (1.5) will come out for public beta before the JavaOne conference in May. Closed alpha testing and bug fixing will be starting in the next few weeks.

    The windows version (.net 2.0) is primarily being supported by the open source community since the funding and direction for the NASA World Wind team is towards the Java version.

    the community does welcome anyone that wants to come in and help at working the code, DX developers would help a lot to get some of the features hammered out more smoothly.

    • What is the Java version using in place of DX-9? Is it using Java3D? Does that get translated into DirectX 9 on Windows. OpenGL? Which Java libary for OpenGL?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 5of0 ( 935391 )
        It's using Java+JOGL, so the answer to your question would be JOGL [wikipedia.org]. And no, it's not translated to DX9 on windows, but the .NET version is a better bet in the immediate future on Windows.
  • The Planets Suite is really good, so why does the video have such a bad recording? I can't tell who put it together, but I know there are better recordings of Jupiter availible on the web for free, legally. Why did they have to use a recording that sounds like a middle school orchestra?
  • No ... have fun with that windosers.

  • Too true (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater.gmail@com> on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @06:48PM (#18018136) Homepage

    Remember this virtual globe has never had the same goals as Google Earth

    That's obvious - because GE's goals include things like stability and performance - two things WorldWind noticeably lacks. (Not to mention the horror that is WorldWind's UI.)
     
    I just tried V1.4 - and it has the same braindead UI problems that previous versions have suffered. When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map. (And as the rotation speed speed of the globe varies with lag - it's frustrating to position precisely.) When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up. (This slows rendering (which is glacial to start with) and makes it difficult to reach a precise zoom point and take a goodly amount of time if you change zoom by any significant amount.) Etc... Etc...
     
    This isn't something for the F/OSS community to be proud of. It was a piece of crap when they took it over - and it's still a piece of crap.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by withak ( 40799 )
      When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map.

      Wrong. Clicking on a point will move to that location, but dragging works just like it does in GE. Incidentally, you can turn off the clicking behavior and the planet inertia/momentum in the View menu.

      When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up.

      Which is also exactly what GE does. Google can just afford faster serve

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

        When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map.

        Wrong. Clicking on a point will move to that location, but dragging works just like it does in GE.

        To put it simply - bullshit. When I click and drag in GE, it stops when I release the mouse. When I click and drag in WW it continues to drift.

        When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up.

        Which is also exact

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by withak ( 40799 )
          To put it simply - bullshit. When I click and drag in GE, it stops when I release the mouse. When I click and drag in WW it continues to drift.

          GE does keep spinning, it just has its inertia set much lighter than WW does. And you can change that in the options if you don't like it.

          Wrong. GE does not render each and every layer - let alone load them. WW does.

          GE doesn't use the same level/row/column scheme as WW does, but I don't notice much difference in tile loading time between WW and GE. It seems to use
        • To put it simply - bullshit. When I click and drag in GE, it stops when I release the mouse. When I click and drag in WW it continues to drift.

          Then.. turn the feature OFF then. Sheesh, quit bitching and LOOK at the configuration options.

          Wrong. GE does not render each and every layer - let alone load them. WW does.

          Watching GE load on a modem, I would have to disagree.. it takes forever to load tiles. (Zoom down to 100 meters and it is a 15 minute wait to see the spot.) With World Wind I would have to

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 5of0 ( 935391 )
      The previous poster mentioned this as well, but I'll note it clearly: You can change the default behavior of setting the earth moving by turning off Motion Momentum and/or Planet Inertia in the View menu.
      You can also try turning of Point Go-To to see if that's more to your liking.
      In World Wind, like a lot of F/OSS apps, you have options. Take the blinders off, and realize that there are other ways of doing things, and some ways might even be, dare I say it, better. But, if you really like the GE contro

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

        The previous poster mentioned this as well, but I'll note it clearly: You can change the default behavior of setting the earth moving by turning off Motion Momentum and/or Planet Inertia in the View menu. You can also try turning of Point Go-To to see if that's more to your liking.
        In World Wind, like a lot of F/OSS apps, you have options. Take the blinders off, and realize that there are other ways of doing things, and some ways might even be, dare I say it, better.

        When a program, out of the box, behaves i

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by withak ( 40799 )
          When a program, out of the box, behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other map program out there - it's broken. It doesn't matter that you can change it. I don't object to options - I object to ill designed UI's.

          What other 3d map program have you used besides GE?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by 5of0 ( 935391 )

          When a program, out of the box, behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other map program out there - it's broken. It doesn't matter that you can change it. I don't object to options - I object to ill designed UI's.

          Now that is a ridiculous argument.
          Because out of the box, the iPhone behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other cell phone out there - it's broken.
          Because out of the box, the electric light behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other light source out there - it's broken.
          Because out of the box, the iPod behaved in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other mp3 player out there at the time - it's broken.
          Because out of the box, the GU

      • I played with the settings a bit...now when I set the camera to have inertia and momentum, the earth keeps bouncing left to right (regardless of compass orientation). By that I mean it turns left to right, back from right to left a little bit, then from left to right again all the way around...it takes 16 bounces and about 8 seconds to go around the world and I'm getting dizzy :-S
    • your post reminds me of a an argument by a British chap that LHD cars are illogical and that there would be less fatalities on the road if every nation of the world would start driving on the left. He used the Japan example to prove his point.

      I am perfectly comfortable driving with the gear stick on the left or the right and I don't get mixed up between break and gas pedal since ... they are exactly in the same order.

      However I do confess that upon switching from RHD to LHD I have my left hand trying t
  • Are they making totally new frameworks for this, or are they using an existing open source framework like Geotools?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by withak ( 40799 )
      It has WMS and some simple WFS support. There have been a few plugins made using proj.4, and the imagery you see in WW was reporjected and processed into tile using FWTools. We welcome contributions from those willing to work on expanding such things. :)
  • I'm a NWW enthusiast, even if I never really used it on a regular basis... (I'm waiting for the Java version... I hope I won't be deceived).

    NASA World Wind sadly never had the media coverage GE had. This is kind of sad. People seems to forget, or ignore, that you can't use Google Earth in a work environment. Well, more precisely, you can't legally install the free version Google Earth in any work environment [slashgeo.org], not even the Plus version (20$US), you need the Pro (400$US) or the Enterprise version. Why am I underlining this? Because I believe this should have helped NASA World Wind to capture mind share. Should, because not a lot of people care about that fact and Google will not enforce this, since they benefit from the number of people using it, a little like Microsoft did not care about Windows being copied some centuries ago. Oh, this change in the license came with version 4 of the GE beta, launched last summer.

    Here's the interesting Google Earth vs NASA World Wind comparison [worldwindcentral.com], on the WW Central website.
    • Considering what a bandwidth pig Google Earth can be, I'd be amazed if many work environments don't have an outright ban and block on it anyway. I know mine does... :(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )
      Google will not enforce this, since they benefit from the number of people using it, a little like Microsoft did not care about Windows being copied some centuries ago.

      Isn't there some stipulation in trademark law that you have to enforce your rights in order to keep them? Same thing with squatters, if you don't enforce your property rights you lose them. Shouldn't the same apply to licenses?
  • Can't see high resolution imagery in NASA World Wind? Well, you can with this great plugin [worldwindcentral.com]. It allows you to use Microsoft Virtual Earth high rez imagery directly in NASA World Wind. If you wonder, yes, Microsoft agreed to this.
  • Dear lord. I know this is slashdot and all, but that has got to be one of the worst written summaries I've ever laid my eyes on. Is it that hard to understand what a run-on sentence is?
  • Since it will work as an applet, the Java version is probably the best response to MS embedding their 3d map server in an IE browser using ActiveX (or whatever it's called now). This will enable next gen web pages to have really nice controls, and it will all be open source/free data. That's very exciting.

    I think the Java naysayers have out of date opinions, JVMs of the past few years are not much trouble to set up and have very good performance. They may use more memory, but if you have a gig in your syste

  • Hardware Rendered Thin Client Idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rohar ( 253766 ) * <bob.rohatensky@sasktel.net> on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @09:41PM (#18019642) Homepage Journal
    In 2002 or so I wrote a aolserver extension that pulled DEM data from a database and hardware rendered with opengl with a texture, coverterted the output to png and returned it to the browser as an image.

    At the time (with what would be very low-end hardware now) it actually performed pretty well and could serve up 100 fps or so from a Nvidia Geforce II card. Aolserver is multithreaded and the tricky part was getting the hardware rendering queueing code stable.
    I did a simple html interface for navigation and the response time from the server at 10ms to generate the image was enough that it felt like a static image off a filesystem. This worked really well when there were large amounts of source data in the image and returning the output images was a lot quicker than returning all the source data and rendering on the client.

    I would think that with today's video hardware it would be possible to have a client that lets the user trace a path across the earth, have the server render all of the sequencial images and create a mpeg-4 video and return it to the client real time.
    I have all of the C/OpenGL/TCL source from what I did before in a dusty box of CD's marked "Things I got bored with once I got them to work" if anyone is interested in it.

  • Videos? (Score:1)

    by Orm ( 23588 )

    ... check out the video for some examples
    But where are they? A link would be nice :-)
  • "So what is so great about 1.4? First of all it is written using .NET 2.0 which allows for some cool new features but more importantly, thanks to Microsoft allowing developers to use visual C# express for free we were able to easily increase the development team, who simply could not afford to purchase visual studio." What a mix: Open source development, sponsored by Microsoft and the CIA, completely done using closed source applications ....
  • And for that matter google earth does as well (not that street overlay junk).
  • ...at least you can use this Slashdot submission as a textbook example of comma splices.
  • you know, right now we are the US's biggest trading partners... But honestly it wouldn't take that much effort on our part to become Chinas largest trading partner.
  • i'd love to see something similar that uses sets of STEREO satellite data, time based flights through the solar system, the ability to visually display CME and their effects on each planet's magnetosphere/plasmasphere.

    heck, how about a "milky way wind"? ;)

    great work on this guys! it's a great inspiration...
    • World Wind has a red/blue stereo plugin, and of course, can display Mars (and a few other planets) data. It's not quite a Milky Way flythrough, but you can sure get a good look at other planets.

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