Russ 3D Hybrids

Ever seen the sun set over the Himalayas? NASA’s answer to Google earth has fantastically detailed displacement maps of Earths terrain. There are loads of different views and options for viewing the planet, plus you are not confined to our own planet, the other current available destinations are, the Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and a very detailed section of the stars viewed from Earth. There are other options such as sunlight and atmospheric scattering, which you can see in the above screen shot.

However unlike Google Earth, World Wind doesn’t have very detailed images of cities, so zooming in really far will not produce very interesting results. It’s still really fun to play with though, I think controlling the camera navigation in World Wind works a lot better than the one in Google Earth. If only they combined powers!

Also at the moment you have a single planet view and when you change planet everything goes blank and re-loads. It would be so much more fun if you actually navigated to the next planet as if you were flying around the solar system. I suspect that it is like this currently because when you navigate the planet you are actually dragging the planet around a static camera rather than the other way around. I think the navigation should be more like a first person shooter, it would take a bit longer for a non-gamer to learn but it would be so much better!

Another great feature is the Anaglyph mode! Check out the above shot with some 3D Glasses. N.B they have got the red and blue the wrong way around, you’ll have to wear the glasses upside down:

Links:

NASA World Wind