Some Features of Virtual Earth:
Technical info, data and image sources :
By default the World Wind download comes only with the public domain imagery from the USGS and Landsat 7 but now the community members have made available the images for New Zealand and New York plus additional countries are also present with the Microsoft Virtual data. Note that all these images are available for non-commercial purposes.
In Google Earth, NASA World Wind and Norkart Virtual Globe save a cache file regarding download imagery to the user’s hard disk enabling the users to use offline to view previously viewed areas. Note that you cannot activate Google Earth without logging into the server for the first time. The one more thing that the users should remember is that Google Earth has limited memory of 2000 MB whereas World Wind has no limit in cache size. The disk cache can be set by the user in Norkot Virtual Globe. NASA World Wind comes with the complete 500m Blue Marble imagery and global place names, which include varied sources of countries, capitals, cities, towns and historical references that are available from install.
The one more ad-on of NASA World Wind displays MODIS imagery present in the Add-on of NASA World Wind allows real time imagery obtained from the JPL Aqua and Terra satellites. This Ad-on consists of real time MODIS imagery. Virtual Earth and Google Earth are both capable of displaying urban areas in high resolution thanks to their private image sources.
The secret of their high resolution is that they actually hired charted flights over major cities of the United States of America to take the aerial images. The three dimensional Weather Globe and Atlas come with complete one Kilometer Blue Marble Imagery, which has 40,000 locations database with countries time zones overlay. This applications requirement is as follows it requires internet connection for online features like cloud cover and real time weather and forecast data.
History :
The use of Virtual Globe software was widely popularized by a novel. It is amazing to known that a science fiction novel was responsible for the popularity of Virtual Earth. This novel was written by Neal Stephenson and the name of the novel was Snow Crash. A corporation known as Central Intelligent Co-operation uses virtual Earth to keep track of geospatial data including maps, architectural plans, weather data, and data for real time satellite surveillance. The major source of inspiration for Virtual Globe is that the software which used the novel concept of using computers to stimulate distant physical environments which was limited to the city of Aspen, Colorado.
When a comparison with the three popular applications it is understood that the Virtual Globe is the latest software with many features which are present in it. For example, let us consider the comparisons, which will clear more feature of Virtual Earth three-dimensional. It contains three-dimensional Graphics which contain the three dimensional views of Building models, Terrain models, Seafloor models. It also consists of Planetarium projects, Day and night views, Images of all the planets, High-resolution data sets, street level address search areas, driving direction areas, business listing areas. The most important feature of Virtual Earth is that the availability of all the features and add-ons in many languages so that the audiences World Wide can use it and appreciates it at the same time.
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