Slashdot Mirror
NASA Releases World Viewer
Klatoo55 writes "Nasa has released a comprehensive world viewing tool that allows you to zoom from planetary resolution down to where you can pick out individual streets. Really cool, but it needs a good internet connection and a decent graphics card. There's all sorts of interesting features, such as the ability to tilt your view for a flight-sim like experience and a data display feature that shows current natural disasters, political boundaries, weather patterns, and landmarks on the Earth's surface, all while providing a dynamic satellite's eye view of the planet."
This is cool. I can see my house! Now if my neighbor had been sunbathing at the time...
I ran to check out the sit and it is Cooooool, but Nasa's gonna have an astronimical bandwith bill today :)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I've been watching the weather and all sorts of neat stuff on the NOAA GEOS site for years. Not great for spying on your city, but great animations for tracking weather and hurricanes
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Recommended Specifications * Windows 2000, XP Home, or XP Professional * Intel Pentium 3 1 ghz or AMD Athlon or higher * 256 MB of RAM * 3D Graphics Card o nVidia GeForce 2 Ultra o ATI Radeon 7500 o Intel Extreme Graphics 2 * DSL / Cable connection or faster * 2 GB of disk space The requirements are a bit high, but the demo pictures they show are quite impressive. It does appear to be opensource, wonder how long it'll be before someone makes a Linux port, and ties to a newsfeed! Trouble in the Middle East? Lets take a look!
Never confuse volume with power.
that's just cool.
~dijjnn
I can finally see the world outside of my Mother's basement!!!!
Will we be able to zoom in on the smoking ruins of the slashdotted webserver? :)
Really cool, but it needs a good internet connection
Are you talking about me or their server?
Pretty cool stuff. The developer says the core will compile on Mono, but obviously there isn't DX for Mono.
Maybe someone can think about a Manged-DX style wrapper around OpenGL for the Mono Project.
Can't think it would be easy though. DX does a lot for you.
The source is supposed to be placed on SourceForge soon. Should be a fun project to hack on.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
The power to view a planet is insignificant next to the power of a slashdotting.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
For those of you who like this sort of software, check out Celestia. It is a 3D space simulator, and lets you visit objects in our solar system and a bunch of stars. It's really amazing, and it's open source! My sister uses it for teaching astronomy to the neighborhood kids in their home-schooling class.
It currently only works with ONE planet!
Don't lie. I'm using it right now on my Windows box and I can see into your closet, there's nothing in there but skeletons and that 'touchy' uncle!
-- ^nA
the CREATURES, they live!
^nA! Creatures in my Head
Here is a commercial site but you can use it for free with watermarks. You can zoom to a persons house. All you need to type in the address of the place. Pretty nice, check it out. Only problem is that some of the images are a couple years old... but then how often do streets and house move/change physcially?
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
Hope someone would integrate this in to Celestia or the other way around. Explore the deepest corners of the galaxy and be in your neighbourhood in a splitsecond.. Nice..
Rapid Nirvana
I wonder what engine the builder used to design that world? It's pretty fantastic! And the level design, simply AMAZING!
Any GIS type application is considered a threat to our national security. If you take a look at these aerial views of DC you can see how the federal government had the overhead views of the whitehouse and the capitol removed (or blocked). The last thing the government wants is to be responsible for a terrorist act. They feel that tools like this are useful to the general public, so they make them available. At the same time, they can see the emminent threat, so they limit its capabilities.
Am I the only one who sees a Stephenson's Snow Crash reference in this?
Actually, the government erected huge white platforms above parts of the city to obscure the stuff that satellites were seeing. It blocked out the sun and all the plants died. They realized it was a bad idea, took the platforms down, and just used Paintbrush to erase the parts they didn't like.
http://freecache.org/http://opensource.arc.nasa.go v/archives/worldwind-1_2.zip
Also cached of course.
We just slashdotted the World.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Tom: "Terrorists could use this to pinpoint places to strike." Powell: "Tom, I have a Hammond Street Guide to Washington D.C. in my back seat that they could use for that. Let's be realis..." Tom: "George, Dick, how in the hell did he get out of the basement? Agents Smith and Johnson, please escort Mr. Powell back to his cell. And get the CEO of Hammond on the phone." News Reporter: "Quickie Marts all over the country were raided by the FBI today in a massive crackdown on the selling of maps. Store clerks were rounded up and shipped to Guantanamo to possibly face charges of providing material aid to terrorists...or was that tourists. Either way, if they're ever actually charged, I'm sure the secret tribunal will execute justice...or was that Lady Justice...to the fullest extent possible."
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
They have a huge amount of data in varried resolution. Most of it is available from multiple sources for free; however they have it all in one spot and all converted for their program.
What makes it truly great is the ability to add your own overlays directly over top of its data. Quite a spectacular product.
If you have it give this a try take a image of vegitaion [A] and overlay it over Iraq with at 30% transparency. Add a overlay that with the sunni / sheite population densities [B] and do the same.
KaPow! Data in context. Quite amazing really.
[A] vegetation will require some cutting and pasting... but the images you have w/ key hole are pretty good
[B] Religious groups
If you want to check them out they are here:
earthviewer
[ I dont' work for them, but I would ;) ]
So this is what you get when you put a bunch of rocket scientists together and tell them to write a "Hello, World?" app?
-JT
Until NASA's servers manage to recover from the demand, here's a Torrent for your downloading enjoyment.
http://centraldownload.mine.nu/download.php?id=110 6&hit=1&file=worldwind.torrent Here is the torrent. It is slow to start but is getting faster with more people.
http://centraldownload.mine.nu/download.php?id=110 6&hit=1&file=worldwind.torrent
(I didn't make the torrent, but I did post the link. ;-)