There's never been a better way to explore our planet from the comfort of our chairs. With the advent of Google Earth™ we were given the opportunity to traverse our world quickly and easily. We can now explore many corners of earth with incredible detail provided by stitching together satellite imagery. Recently Microsoft came on the scene with their product called Virtual Earth. It has similar functions as Google's Earth but incorporates some advanced meshing features and more realistic 3d object like building and mountains. And then there's Nasa's World Wind where you can explore very realistic geography of Earth, our Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. World Wind gives you effects like shadowing based on sun location as well as many other great features.
The purpose of this site is to demystify these amazing tools and provide the tips and resources for their use.
So which is better Google Earth™ or Microsoft Virtual Earth? Well, after significant use of both I think there advantages and disadvantages to using either one. Buidings and mountains in Virtual Earth render nicer and more realistic than Earth. In Google Earth you have grey boxes in cities where in Mictosoft Virtual Earth there are bitmap rendering of buildings which gives the buildings more realisitic feel. Mictosoft Virtual Earth has better placename search than Google Earth. Microsoft was able to create the lifelike cities with technology and expertise it acquired with the purchase of Vexcel, a provider of photogrammetry, imagery and remote sensing technology. You can find even the most remote locations. But overall the smoothness and rendering speed factor was not there in Virtual Earth, In Google Earth everything is so damn smooth. I found myself wanting more in Microsofts Virtual Earth. It is still a beta app so we can’t expect too much. I do see it evolving into a serious competitor to google.
I also found the land pics to be pretty old in some places. For example I located my house which was built almost 7 years ago and the picture of my development was still under construction!
A major stumbling block for Microsofts Virtual Earth is that you need the following configuration:
- A computer that’s running Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista
- Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or Windows Internet Explorer 7
- 250 MB or more of hard disk space
- At least 1.0 GHz processor (2.8 GHz or faster recommended)
- Minimum of 256 MB of system memory (1 GB recommended)
- 32 MB video card (256 MB recommended) that supports Microsoft DirectX 9, with 3D hardware acceleration enabled
- A high speed Internet connection
The need for all this will deter many people from being able to run Microsoft Virtual Earth. The install of Virtual Earth takes a bit of time too.
So in conclusion Google Earth which has had a lot of development time comes out on top. It’s clear though that the footsteps are heard loud and clear right behind. At the end of the day we are all winners when two giants fight it out to make the best app. But wait! there's yet another player, NASA. World Wind, an open source 3D interactive world viewer, was created by NASA's Learning Technologies project, and released in mid-2004. It is now developed by NASA staff and open source community developers. Explore this site to the fullest and download all the applications and see which one you like best. All these applications are evolving so enjoy the ride!
