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