Has Anyone Tried Nasa World Winds?

[Peter Scholtz]

Found an article in a recent Wired magazine about NASA World Winds: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

 

I'm busy downloading the 180 MB now, but it looks very promising. Satellite maps with great zoom and you can find coordinates this way.

 

Has anyone tried it yet?

[Stefanoodle]

It looks fascinating, though I have not tried it. I don't think my system here will handle it yet, in terms of hardware, but I would have the necessary connection speed. Let us know what it's like when you have it up and running.

[Azaruk]

I downloaded the program, can't get the accessories yet (they're temprarily withdrawn) which would be useful as they permit caching of downloaded images for use off-line, and still need DirectX 9c to run it. Will be trying it over the weekend.

[+GlobalRat]

Ooooo... this looks interesting... let us know how it fares before we all try sucking up the meagre bandwidth we get from a certain co. trying to download this sucker.

 

Also note that you need to install .NET to run this baby...

Edited May 9, 2005 by GlobalRat

[+GlobalRat]

mmmm…. Played around with this last night. Quite a nice toy, and interesting to see satellite imagery from around the world. Don’t expect the aerial pics you see on something like multimap though. The images max out at about 10000m. You need to be connected to get the initial images. These images will remain available offline as long as you don’t change the viewing mode or click on the refresh button, if you do, wipes out the whole globe and starts from scratch

 

There seem to be some glitches with the server connection and repolling system. It tests the connection a few times, thereafter the program will just hang, and it seems the only way one can get it going again is to restart the program. The other frustrating thing is that one has no real idea of progress of images that it is downloading. It downloads images in a patchwork quilt fashion layer by layer. While there is progress of each image being loaded, you have no idea how many images and layers it still has to download, so you’re never really sure when it has completed. Combined with the connection glitch, you could happily be sitting and waiting…. Picture the skeletons in the desert.

 

All in all though, with a bit of patience, it’s nice to see the satellite imagery. It will be interesting to see how this grows. Oh yeah, if you connect via work and they monitor your internet usage… I suggest you don’t!!

[Tsongkapa]

I downloaded this programme a few weeks ago and since then I haven't done any work. I just play with this programme. It is fantastic. Its very heavy on resources though, and already I've built up a 2,8GB cache. Be warned!

[Azaruk]

I downloaded the program, installed and ran it - but found it incredibly sloooooooow!

 

2.4GHz Celeron, 512MB memory.

 

Gave up due to snail-like pace.

[Tsongkapa]

Its the speed of your internet connection that's crucial. At work we have a very fast connection and so it loads quite fast. I find it extremely fascinating. Having a lot of RAM of course means that you can get on with other things while it loads the images.

[Azaruk]

We run on a permanent ADSL conenction here, but the program still crawls. Too frustrating to keep - it has been uninstalled. Good idea though, maybe I'll try again when I get my system upgraded.