2006_04_01_archive

Some additional notes on NASA World Wind 1.3.4

I wanted to make some additional comments about Casey Chesnut's

Virtual Earth plug-in and World Wind in general. To address possible

speculation, my understanding of the NASA World Wind philosophy is

that it includes the desire to keep the software's data public domain.

Thus, though Microsoft is allowing data and functionality from their

Virtual Earth business unit to be used within World Wind, do not

expect the data to be included in the World Wind core product.

Nevertheless, the Virtual Earth/NASA World Wind mashup is

groundbreaking, and may signal the first glimpse of detectable

competition for Google Earth.

Besides the measure tool mentioned in my earlier post, some other

1.3.4 features I noticed include:

* An ESRI shapefile loader---for points, polylines, and polygons. It

requires a user-created XML helper file, so things are far from

automated. Better shapefile functionality is listed as a goal of

the release

* A movie maker plug-in bundled with the installation

* Atmosphere effects somewhat similar to Google Earth as an optional

layer

Though available in previous versions, I continue to appreciate the

ability to "turn off" the basemap imagery.

posted by Alan Glennon at 11:55 PM | 0 comments

NASA World Wind 1.3.4 beta

New builds of NASA World Wind 1.3.4 are being released every few days.

Unlike the commercial software world, the ongoing releases of NASA

World Wind 1.3.4 really are beta. As such, I would not recommend

installing the beta unless you are a developer.

World Wind developer Randy Kim demonstrated today's build (5Apr06) in

Santa Barbara, and it seemed pretty stable. I'm running beta 2, which

is several days old, and it has performed normally. The 1.3.4. updates

are discussed in an earlier post. I do not think it is on their formal

list, but NASA also added a line/arc measuring tool.

Visit the discussion at the World Wind forum for information (and

downloads):

http://forum.worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.php?showtopic=6362

Issues and bugs for 1.3.4 are being tracked at:

http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/1.3.4_issue_tracker

The Mars THEMIS imagery used by World Wind 1.3.4 is stunning. No

reason to wait for Google.

--

On a different note...

Google Earth API:

The blog Let's Push Things Forward has a few notes and links

concerning programmatically accessing Google Earth.

posted by Alan Glennon at 8:34 PM | 0 comments

Virtual Earth plug-in for NASA World Wind

I heard today that Microsoft is allowing the integration of its