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."

Comments

Hmm, time to rewrite the applet as a flash plugin.

[Space cowboy]

The data I had for hostip.info was 1-pixel-per-kilometre. This new data is twice that resolution, and if I combine this new data with the soon-to-be-open-source 3d engine in Flash, I think it'd be really cool. Geolocate yourself or anyone else by their IP, then zoom around that location in 3d :-)

Sounds like a fun thing to put together - maybe this weekend for the 2D stuff, and as soon as the 3D engine is open-source, I'll include that :-)

As always with this sort of thing, it's getting hold of the data that's the hard part - kudos to those giving it away free to research, education, and me :-)

Simon

So....

[Lithdren]

How long before we get a real time world generated for a game like GTA, that uses maps like this to allow you to literaly travel all around the world?

This sort of stuff is so amazing to me, never before has mankind had the ability to get maps of areas with this much detail in such vast areas. I really wonder what past generations would think.

But, I still want to play GTA and rampage my own neiborhood. :P

PC only?

[azav]

It's a serious bummer when the download page only has a windows executable.

Is there a Mac of Linux version available or are we left out in the cold?

Re:PC only?

[withak]

Supposedly the only thing that in WW won't compile in Mono is the DirectX stuff. There has been talk of an OpenGL port for ages; no one has ever actually started though.