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NASA World Wind 1.4 Released With Trailer
Bull_UK writes "As many of you probably already know NASA had to shift it's priorities to the upcoming Java version of World Wind, leaving 1.4 effectively orphaned, but the Open Source community came together and with a lot of hard work we were able to finish what Chris Maxwell started. Some of the new things which differentiate the new World Wind from the competition are the amazing new visual effects, including HDR, check out the video for some examples. Remember this virtual globe has never had the same goals as Google Earth, if you just want to see your house stick with GE, although many areas have high resolution as good and sometimes better than GE. World Wind is aimed at education and science, all the default imagery is copyright free, you don't need to purchase a license to redistribute the imagery and there are no pro or expert versions to buy, you can happily use World Wind at work or school without fear of any lawyers confiscating your research."
When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map.
Wrong. Clicking on a point will move to that location, but dragging works just like it does in GE. Incidentally, you can turn off the clicking behavior and the planet inertia/momentum in the View menu.
When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up.
Which is also exactly what GE does. Google can just afford faster servers. It's much more responsive after those coarser layers are downloaded, and (unlike GE) if you set your disk cache size large enough then those tiles will be there forever.
The previous poster mentioned this as well, but I'll note it clearly: You can change the default behavior of setting the earth moving by turning off Motion Momentum and/or Planet Inertia in the View menu.
You can also try turning of Point Go-To to see if that's more to your liking.
In World Wind, like a lot of F/OSS apps, you have options. Take the blinders off, and realize that there are other ways of doing things, and some ways might even be, dare I say it, better. But, if you really like the GE control scheme, you can switch the options to make it work more towards that end. I personally find GE very stiff - I like to feel like I'm actually moving a globe. But I can't change that.
It's called choice. Get used to it.
And I notice you throw flashy words like "stability" and "performance" out there, but then just whine about the UI. Perhaps you should actually complain about what you set out to complain about.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
Maybe it would be easier to develop an OpenGL display to replace the DirectX one than port the whole damn thing to Java / Java3D.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
When a program, out of the box, behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other map program out there - it's broken. It doesn't matter that you can change it. I don't object to options - I object to ill designed UI's.
Now that is a ridiculous argument.
Because out of the box, the iPhone behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other cell phone out there - it's broken.
Because out of the box, the electric light behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other light source out there - it's broken.
Because out of the box, the iPod behaved in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other mp3 player out there at the time - it's broken.
Because out of the box, the GUI behaved in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other user interface out there at the time - it's broken.
Becuase out of the box, [insert any number of innovative and 'different' features here] behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other [insert category] out there - it's broken.
Just because something is different, doesn't mean it's wrong or broken. Just because you don't like it, or aren't used to it, doesn't mean it's broken. I don't like how the MacOS works, becuase I used windows for most of my life. That must mean the MacOS interface is broken. There are names for this reasoning, it's called a logical fallacy.
Now, if you were locked into this interface, I *might* understand your right to complain. But it takes approximately...let me time it...5.99 seconds to change it. And that includes time to operate my stopwatch. Try doing that with the iPod. It'll take a little longer than 6 seconds to swap out the click wheel for some buttons, so that it can be like virtually every other mp3 player out there.
What you think is 'right' often just depends on what you are used to. For example, I am used to World Wind. And I got accustomed to actually feeling like I'm moving a globe around (real globes have inertia, and keep going), so when I went to use Google Earth, it felt very artifical and tacky. I personally think Google Earth is wrong, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. It just means that I am used to something else. It's called preference. I would also argue that a virtual globe isn't something that needs to be able to be positioned precisely, but that is beside my point.
Maybe you should actually read what I wrote - and note that under the discussion of UI I also note performance issues.
Okay, you did mention that World Wind was slowed by the tile rendering, and glacial to start with. I'll give you that. I personally find that World Wind has worked just fine on everything I've tried it on (far from glacial), but I'm sure that depending on the setup it can be slow. I'll admit, the rendering isn't extrememly efficient. It's being worked on, but the developers have day jobs. I'm not offering that as an excuse, because I think that World Wind is something to be very proud of as it stands. It has come from a Blue Marble viewer written as a side project by a single programmer at NASA to what it is today, with a large community base.
If you had raised any stability issues, or described performance issues other than the fact that it seemed to move slower than a large chunk of ice and rock, I may very well have agreed with you. I admit, World Wind isn't perfect. You may want to give Google Earth instead of World Wind to your grandmother.
But World Wind is not crap. It's not the best piece of code ever concieved, either. But it is worth its salt. It is not only a pretty decent virtual globe, but it is really good at what it was meant to be good at - flexibility, extensibility, and most importantly, freedom to use it wherever you want. Since the comparison has already been made, compare
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.