Incredible 3D world from NASA
 

NASA has released (not sure when) a program called World Wind free to download. It's a 3D world which downloads images from sattelites. You can see any singular place on earth, the zoom is amazing. It doesn't offer much more than simply a 3D navigatable earth, but I think that's a good thing :p.

The download is a hefty one, at 169mb, but if you're interested in such things, this is the best there is. Go on, find your house, I dare you!

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

Have fun :)

Cool. I think I'll down load that at work tommorow when i have high speed instead of this painfull dial up.

I haven't looked at this one yet, I'll dl it and play with it later. Thanks, I'm sure it's interesting.

A few years ago MS set up their terraserver site which also allowed you to zoom in on satellite photos of a lot of the earth. They were a few years old, not live or recent shots. I looked at my house and zoomed in as close as I could which showed my house and three neighboring houses within about 100ft or so. To play, we zoomed in on the southern French Mediterranean coast looking for nude beaches but it was night time; as we zoomed closer and closer to a speck of light, it turned out to be a ship floating just off shore.

I played with a program like this called Keyhole, but this one's free. It's pretty awesome.

I heard about this from my professor and thought it was quite amazing, can you really find your house? Wow, I will have to download it at work since I have dial-up at home. Great stuff!

It's took just as long to install as it did to download. It's a good thing I didn't have shit to do today.

it won't let me download it. it says:

The connection was refused when attempting to contact opensource.arc.nasa.gov:8888.

I guess I'll wait till the weekend to try and download it on a different computer that's not on a university network.

most of the states is done in pretty good detail, esp the DC area.

As a Canadian I always feel left out of these things.

Nobody ever takes satellite photos of Canada

I could only use it for a few mintues... it was slowing down my machine pretty fuckin' bad.

Start suspiciously moving around large tractor trailors and freight trains, that should do the trick. :thumbsup:

the whole world is covered by this program, its just the USGS only has detailed images of the US cause well, its the US. so dont fret, hey im in NZ and i can still make out my house, i think.

and make sure you have anti aliasing and anisotripic filtering off in the contol panel or you may have some nasty issues

Hell, I'll go up to Canada and help you move trucks, Ace :thumbsup:

hey, say i have an ati radeon 9800 pro....how would i disable anisotripic and anti-aliasing? some of my pics come out looking....not so hot.

using the latest ati catalyst control center

I think the program is great! The USGS data is there, but patchy at various elevations at my place just north of Kingston, Ontario. Really great detail of China. I wonder why?

application failed to intialize!! wouldn't work for me. Anyone with a solution?

downloading it now, it looks like it's gonna be pretty neat

and it is.

Wow, nice one :) My laptop has some problems with areas up north, displaying extremely distorted tris all over the place. Other than that, this is awesome. I've been exploring for 2 hours now.

Very cool program, I could sit for days playing with this. I can see my house, but its a pretty old shot. A neighborhood adjoining mine is still a field although its been there for years.

Try this. Turn on Rapid fire Modis and select tour mode.

If anyone who hasn't downloaded it yet wants to DL, it will go A LOT faster on BitTorrent than using the direct download link. It's going at 320 KB/sec for me, compared to single digits the other way.

yes, bittorent is your friend. got it in under 8 min

Downloading now. Very awesome. Thank you so very much for sharing this link with us.

Google map now has a very similar application that you don't need to download and install. Go here and choose satellite.

link

crashity crash crash CRASH!

i absolutly love this program. it is the most amazing thing. you can zoom in pretty close, but it isnt real time. It is based on satellite images taken over time, but I have still managed to find my house, and other landmarks in my area. and for any UFO fans out there, i have also found Area 51! muahaha just click on find, then type in groom lake. its in nevada or arizona or something i dont remember which.

Russia is really detailed too. Old photos from cold war days anyone? Time to go check out Cuba. Anyone up for a game of Wheres Fedel? :lol:

Well, I'm guessing the more populated an area is, the more whoever command the satellites cares about it, thus the better quality pics of China (most populated country on the planet) and certain other places. I've used Keyhole, it's a shame you can only use it for a week. I might try this program when I get back home (In Pittsburgh for a few days, seeing Victor Wooten tomorrow) just to see if it has better quality pictures.

...anyone want to go to Hollidaysburg PA and see if you can see individual houses or if it's too blurry? =D

Crashed big time