Open Source Alternative To Google Earth?

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @08:30AM from the you-are-where dept.

aws910 writes "Today, I fired up Google Earth to find that the 'points of interest' category had been removed, and a single checkbox is in its place. Certain layers are now entirely inaccessible. Google triggered a user revolt, but admitted fault, and promised to restore full functionality someday. In the meantime, I've found a lack of plausible alternatives. Bing seems nice, but Moonlight crashes the browser on any machine I use, and I'd rather use OSS anyway ... which made me realize there doesn't seem to be a good open-source alternative to Google Earth. Am I missing something?"

1 of 190 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Licensing? Severs? by hipp5 · 2010-03-24 09:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

We use it in urban planning (architects do too). Google Earth can be linked to Sketchup. You can import terrain from Google Earth, model a structure on it, and then export it back into Earth. You can also use it for some GIS-esque analysis by defining polygons and such on it.