From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 23:10:05 MST
I recently had the pleasure of using a very slick piece of software: A fully
zoomable globe, rendered in navigable 3D terrain including buildings and
other artificial structures, with resolutions that vary from 30-meters to
1-m depending where on the globe you are. It is very cool to be able to
smoothly zoom in from a view of the world from a moon's distance away to a
helicopter's eye view of Tokyo in full relief. Even though the vast
majority of the world is still at 30-meter resolution (though this is
quickly changing), it is still pretty damn cool that you can take a detailed
peak at the terrain of most places on the globe (classified military places
like Area 51 were noticeable holes in the data).
Of course, the database that drives this is HUGE. Don't expect to be
zooming around the globe at home for a few years.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:50 MST