A little while ago I wrote a post about the wonders of Google Earth and using it as a tool for trip planning.

Just recently I was made aware of another similar program from NASA called World Wind.  Although World Wind seems similar to Google Earth at first, it’s not and is actually quite different in many ways. I’ll spare you the details, but if you’re dying to know go check out their comparison wiki.

By far the best feature this program has (in my opinion) is a topo map overlay feature which allows you to view a high resolution topo of anywhere in the US (it doesn’t have the maps for anywhere outside the US though). You can also tilt the view to get a 3d visual of the area you’re looking at. One of my gripes about Google Earth is that you can get a good visualization of a destination, but you can’t really replace that with the info you get  from a good topo map. World Wind also gives you access to current weather info such as cloud cover, barometric pressure and rainfall. It also has several plug-ins for GPS devices. There are still many things this program has offer that I’ve get to explore:

• NASA SVS: sets of animations that demonstrate things such as hurricane dynamics and seasonal changes across the globe.
• MODIS: sets of data the catalogs fires, floods, dust, smoke, storms and even volcanic activity, which is all updated daily.
• GLOBE DATA: Rainfall, barometric pressure, cloud cover and many more, which all include temperature scales.

The program also has it’s downsides as well. It seems a little sluggish on the speed side of things and aerial imagery looks to be a bit outdated, especially compared to Google Earth. Another thing is that they only currently have a windows version of the program, although their site says they’re working on a Java version that will work on any platform. 

As stated on their website, World Wind is more of an education tool, whereas Google earth is more of a geographic search tool. Seems like World Wind is a work in progress but definitely worth a look for the topo feature alone. So don’t wait, go download it and check it out. Let us know what you think in the comments.