New TOPO Software from NASA... FREE!

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southerncross01

Guest
Check this out, I am not sure if anyone has brought this to the attention of this bb yet but I thought I would pass on the link.

Its an amazing software package from the boys and girls at a little organization known as NASA. Unfortunately there is no interface yet for getting coordinates from a GPS device yet, but it is great for trip planning and best of all... its free!

Check it out.

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

Guest
I'm downloading worldwind now- it's a tad large. It's excellent software- the older version was good, and I've heard this new one is incredible.
 
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NorCalDiscoII

Guest
Very entertaining, I can see the place I was born across the globe!!!

The software is a power-hog though, on a top-of-the-line Dell laptop it's taking up all the processing power, forget about this if you've got a slow PC!
 
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southerncross01

Guest
Someone placed a "Feature Wish" for making it GPS compatiable. Any smart computery programmers out there may be able to develop a plugin for it, I don't know. It is a power hog... Don't leave it on unattended for to long, I found that out the other night.

Have been able to see all the trails I have hit in the Harrisonburg area with great detail though. Wonderful!
 
Leslie

Leslie

Well-known member
Apr 28, 2004
3,473
0
52
Kingsport TN
Downloaded the zip yesterday, never had a chance to check it out, so I threw it on a CD and took it home and fired it up there.....


Wow! A digital globe! At home on dial-up, bringing in additional data is excruciatingly slow, but here at work it gets it on in nicely.....


I don't think GPS functionality would be of tremendous use with it.... not at a global scale. It'd be a neat toy, true, but the base satellite mosaic is coarse in resolution, you would only see a blur if you were zoomed in to city-level. Of course, it can bring in all the additional data, but, you would have to have a fast connection to the internet to make use of it. So, using it on the go isn't so practical.


I've clicked the momentum on, zoomed in to a 1/3 view and dropped the perspective to show the horizon, started it rolling, and left it up to be a screen saver on my other monitor while I'm working on the other one...... really neat to just see the earth roll by underneath you like that, far above normal airplane range.......



-L
 
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RBBailey

Well-known member
Jul 26, 2004
6,758
3
Oregon
www.flickr.com
Ya, I downloaded it with 11mbps and it still took 15 minutes or so.

It came just in time! I was due for a review lesson in Lat and Long to my 8th graders. They didn't all understand the relation between the North Star, the poles, the equator, etc. They can use Lat and Long to find things, or to identify place, but they were lacking any background info on why it works etc...

So I got a computer hooked up to high speed DSL in the classroom, hooked it up to an in focus projector and showed them the globe spinning in space, after a few minutes of using the program with them they all understood the workings of Lat and Long, they all understood exactly why summer days are longer in the higher latitudes, but not warmer, etc. I did all this without the zoom feature. Then, about 5 minutes before class was done I said something like, "And, if you want to use this program to, say, find the school from space..." I zoomed into the photo of the school and had it at full resolution within 15 seconds - they literally came out of their seats! I had students staying in for lunch and after school to play with it and to use Lat and Long to study their atlas and maps in the room. 8th grade is a good year to teach, but it does make a difference having good tools instead of stupid text books.

Anyway, very cool program, they just need to get their server working so the landsat images will go to full resolution. Comon NASA!
 
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