The guys over at EOLi (Earth Observation Link), part of esa, have updated their catalogue viewing and ordering application, it now uses NASA World Wind Java to allow you to view data on a 3D globe. To activate the World Wind 3D map, you click on the “Map Settings” icon on top of the map, and select the projection “Orthographic (new 3D map)”, this switches the viewer window, the standard World Wind view is shown, with Blue Marble NG and i-cubed layers on by default.
The fun comes when you click connect, a new list of online data appears, this list includes satellites like SPOT, IKONOS and MODIS, tick the satellites you are interested in, select the area and date range you are interested in and hit search. Once the search is complete you select the data you want and add it to your list, you will then see lots of squares appear on the globe, each of these squares represents a satellites image, the images are also shown in a scrollbox at the side of the viewer. You can now tick any of the images in the list below the viewer and it will appear on the globe, you can also do other things such as order the ticked data, if you have an accont with esa that is.
The whole thing is put together pretty well, but note it is designed for professionals and not casual users, GE fanboys should steer clear, I did have a few issues, such as searches finding too many results and thus not letting me select any data to view, I also had a couple of lockups which required me using task manager to close the app, ignoring those problems it’s nice to see esa using an Open Source application and not wasting our money on developing their own software or worse still paying Google or ESRI for it.
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