Nasa World Wind

	caption	Screenshot of World Wind showing USGS Urban Ortho-Imagery of Huntington Beach, California
	developer	NASA Ames Research Center
	operating System	Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP
	genre	Virtual Globe
	license	NASA Open Source license v13
	website	worldwindarcnasagov

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World Wind is a Virtual Globe developed by NASA for use on Personal Computer s running Microsoft Windows . The program overlays NASA Satellite Imagery and USGS Aerial Photography on a 3D model of the Earth , Moon and Mars . ( Venus and Jupiter are also available, but without 3D data)

The user interacts with the selected planet by rotating it and zooming in and out. An overlay of five million placenames and political boundaries is included. The software also provides the ability to browse maps and other imagery on the internet using the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service , import ESRI Shapefiles and placemarks from Kml/kmz files.

DATASETS AVAILABLE

Low resolution Blue Marble datasets are included with the initial Download ; as a user zooms in to certain areas, additional high resolution data is downloaded from the NASA Server s. The size of all currently available data sets is about 4.6 Terabytes .

Earth

Image/terrain datasets:

Blue Marble Next Generation imagery

Landsat 7 imagery

---NLT Landsat ( Visible & Pseudo Color)

--- Geocover 1990 & 2000 (pseudo)

---OnEarth (visible & pseudo)

USGS imagery

---Digital Ortho

---Urban Area Ortho

---Topo Maps

SRTM+ terrain data (includes Bathymetry )

Animated data layers:

Scientific Visualization Studio

MODIS

GLOBE

NRL Real-Time Weather

Extraterrestrial datasets

Moon

Clementine (40xx - Colour, 30xx - Greyscale)

Shaded Elevation Map

Mars

MOC ( Mars Global Surveyor - Mars Orbiter Camera)

MOLA (MGS - Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter)

THEMIS ( Mars Odyssey - Thermal Emission Imaging System )

MDIM ( Viking - Mars Digital Image Model)

Venus

Magellan Imaging Radar (Color/Greyscale)

Shaded Elevation Map

SPECIFICATIONS

Baseline resolutions

--- 500 m (Blue Marble Next Generation)

Typical high resolutions

--- U.S.

-- USGS Digital Ortho: 1 m (grayscale; near full coverage)

-- USGS Urban Area Ortho: 0.25 m {Link without Title}

--- Global: 15 m (Landsat 7; except for polar areas)

Altitude resolution:

--- U.S.: 30 m (1 Arcsecond ; SRTM)

--- Global: 90 m (3 arcsecond; SRTM {Link without Title} )

Age:

--- Some USGS aerial images were taken in the early 1990s .

--- Landsat 7 images are all taken after 1999 (except for Geocover 1990).

ADDITIONAL LAYERS

Additional data that can be projected onto the globe includes country borders, place names, and lines of latitude and longitude.

One of these layers, ''Wikipedia'', available as an add-on, gives points of interest, with click-through links connected to Wikipedia . This example shows the Washington DC National Mall , with each ring representing a link to an article:

COMPETITOR

version of Google Earth, and may release a Linux version in the future.

NASA World Wind will always remain free, and to date all add-ons and plugins are freely available. Google Earth has additional services such as GPS Navigation , for which it charges.

SEE ALSO

Google Maps

Google Earth

TerraServer-USA

Virtual Earth

EXTERNAL LINKS

NASA World Wind homepage

World Wind Central

World Wind Wiki

Wikipedia points of interest layer from WikiProject Geographical coordinates

Comparison of Google Earth and World Wind

Worldwind cache pack download service (caution: these are huge files)

PhotoGlobe WorldWind Add-On linking satellite images to georeferenced ground photos (still small but promising)

	CATEGORIES ABOUT NASA WORLD WIND

	virtual globes

	free science software

	nasa

	cartography

	windows software

	kml products