Newly released World Wind plug-ins
You must have used Google Earth to see your house on the virtual globe. However, it is not the only software providing geographical information to everyone. Many other software applications are available in the market today such as Earth Browser, Earth Explorer etc. Now, NASA has launched its mapping software application to make space shuttle imagery and high resolution photography available to everybody. World Wind is a free as well as open source virtual globe tool developed by NASA and open source community intended for use on PCs and runs on Microsoft Windows. The World Wind’s feature is that it superimposes aerial camera work, NASA and USGS satellite imagery, topographic maps and openly available GIS information on 3-Dimensional representations of the planet Earth and other planets.
In addition to the Earth, the program World Wind has also covered Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter (and its 4 moons- Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa) and SDSS which has images of stars and galaxies. In the File menu, all these things are available. Users are able to rotate, tilt, and zoom in and out the chosen planet. You are able to see 5 million location names, latitudes and longitudes, political borders and other location conditions. Making use of this software program, you can browse the maps and geospatial information. You can even import kml or kmz files and ESRI shape files.
The World Wind can support .X models and higher visual effects like sun shading or atmospheric dispersion. The resolution in the United States is sufficient high to distinguish individual buildings, houses and cars. The resolution exterior to the US is at least 15 m/pixel. World Wind can integrate Microsoft Virtual Earth’s high resolution data for non-commercial purposes. World Wind makes use of digital elevation model data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. One can see topographic features e.g. Mount Everest in rich 3-D. This software program also has bathymetry data so that users are able to see oceanic features like ridges in rich 3-D.
People supplement this software program by adding their own information and making them accessible through different sources such as the World Wind Central or blogs. Images as well as films are produced by utilizing Landsat, USGS data, Blue Marble. They can be reallocated, modified and used for business purposes.
It has a number of add-ons as well as plug-ins. Different types of add-ons included in this program are Point layers - simple XML files showing place marks as icons. Trail layers - paths or routes. Line features - XML with a number of points imagined as a line. Polygon features - XML having a list of points as a filled polygon. Place names - particular points like cities and hills that are given text names. Model features - XML to make 3D textured meshes. Image layers - high-resolution imagery for different locations. Scripts - files controlling camera movement. Plugins are small programs in C#, J# or VB that are installed and compiled at startup by the software itself. NASA World Wind will certainly assist you in getting geographical data in an interesting manner. [tags]NASA
Tags: NASA World Wind
