Amazing Facts of NASA World Wind
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a most respected institution in the world. It has successfully launched number of satellites and undertaken various space missions with considerable success. Therefore, when someone like NASA invents something, it carries a huge burden of expectations. Public interest, as a rule is sky high.
After having a look at NASA World Wind, one can say, NASA has delivered. NASA World Wind is a free virtual globe, which is designed and developed by NASA for personal computers. Microsoft Windows was necessary in the earlier versions but recent Java versions are cross platform. The program overlays NASA satellite imagery, topographic maps, aerial photography and available GIS data on 3D models of the Earth as well as other planets.
World Wind is not just limited to information about the earth. In fact, you can use this to view the mars, moon and other planets. If you want to look out into the universe, it is possible with NASA World Wind. World Wind was written to be replaceable and extensible so, you can conform World Wind to your needs and it will deal with difficult and complex image handling and manipulation.
NASA released world Wind in 2004. Apart from the Earth, there are several worlds in World Wind: Venus, Mars, Moon, Jupiter etc. Users can interact with the selected planet by tilting the view, rotating it, and zooming in and out. 5 million places, names, political boundaries, location criteria, and latitude/longitude lines can be viewed. World Wind enables the user to browse maps and geospatial data on the internet, import ESRI shape files or kml/ kmz files. This is an example of how World Wind enables everyone to deliver his or her data.
The resolution of the United States is high enough to identify individual buildings, cars, houses and even the shadows of people. The resolution outside the United States is more that 15 meters per pixel. Virtual Earth’s high-resolution data was incorporated in World Wind to for non-commercial use after consent from Microsoft. One can view topographic features such as the Mount Fuji or Grand Canyon in three dimensions. In addition, World Wind has large water body’s data, which allows users to see ocean features, such as ridges and trenches, in 3D.
Many people using the applications are adding their own data. All movies and images created with World Wind using LandSat, Blue Marble, or USGS public domain data can be freely re-distributed, modified and used on web sites, for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
World Wind is not a copy or competitor of Google Earth. Both Google Earth and NASA World Wind are advanced programs with amazing feature sets. Despite their similarities, they differ significantly in focus, philosophy, and development history. Many use both programs, depending on what they wish to achieve. Google Earth is great for viewing earth data in different ways and looking up any location on earth. With World Wind, you can use the component into your application to bring your own data with data from other companies together in innovative ways.
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