Few of Google’s projects, rumors of projects, and acquisitions have generated as much envy among Linux users as Google Earth. In some respects the search engine behemoth is quite OS-agnostic, but the 3D virtual globe remains limited to Windows desktops. But there is an alternative: NASA’s World Wind project. Like Google Earth, it’s a 3D planetary visualization system that overlays satellite imagery, weather, political, and topological map data. The difference is: World Wind is open source.
It’s open source, that’s great, but I don’t really see how this is supposed to be an alternative to something that only runs on Windows? All I can see on the website is a .exe file and they clearly state in the requirements that you need Windows to run it… So It seems like it’s not really an alternative that I can run on my Linux box…
Anyways, my point is just that I don’t get it why you wrote this: “In some respects the search engine behemoth is quite OS-agnostic, but the 3D virtual globe remains limited to Windows desktops.”
Whatever.
If you read the link at the end of the headline, you’ll see that a Russian developer is working on a clone for OS X and Linux. HTH.
I was rathrer disappointed not to see a Linux download.
It’s written using .NET and the source code is available. Maybe it won’t be long till we see it running under Mono. The only problem would be the Direct3D thing…
(ponders OPEN-SOURCE SEARCH ENGINE)
that`s not true you can download it for linux from this page http://ww2d.berlios.de/index.php?id=16
I had to make some sym links to get it to work
ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4
ln -s /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 libexpat.so.1
ln -s /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1
I can see the world and zoom in using Ctrl-+ but I cannot download the maps from the servers. I assume it`s because I`m behind a proxy.
It gave me a segmentation fault under Breezy.
I’ve hired a contractor to work on the 3D OpenGL version using Mono/Tao. He has made some good progress, and made some insightful observations, so I am hopeful this can work. The goal is to have the core functionality working in Linux/MacOS X/Windows – although we do plan to redesign parts of the core so it is not a port so much as it is a translation of the WW idea.
but it lacks the hi-resolution photography that GEarth has. However, the topography is much better rendered, as well are certain, more remote locals (such as Iraq, my home town in Alaska, etc). I’d like to see it at it’s 2.0 stage. However, it isn’t built with the same ideas in mind as Keyhole, that is, something to build presentations with, instead it is for research. So I wouldn’t call it a replacement.
People who just want a Google Earth Clone might want to have a look at
http://www.earth3d.org
which even was released way before the Google Earth hype started and which is available for all major plattforms.
I’m currently working on a similar Qt4 based project myself. My project has a different focus though and I will release an early alpha version soon.
apt-get install earth3d (I’m on debian unstable)
does this one work under emulation ? either crossover office or cedega ?
I have .NET distributible runtimes accessible under crossover, and some .net programs run perfectly. Does this one ?
I am at work and cannot check
I refuse to install .NET on any windows machine and i’ll refuse to install any .NET workalike on any *nix machine. There’s better ways to make portable software.
maybe so.
but you will miss out on the goodies
If you want to stay on the safe side in terms of patents feel free to use earth 3D (from http://www.earth3d.org) as suggested above.
The approach is way cooler anyways as it is using a true 3D globe. Also it’s using Qt 3 (which is also used by Google Earth) and therefore it’s crossplattform. Binaries for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux are available as well as the source.
The main issue with software like this is the source data: the satellite photos. A large portion of them are obtained through commercial satellites and are thusly copyrighted, so regardless of the license of the software, the photographs aren’t freely available. Does anyone know to what extent the photos are available in the public domain and how up to date they are? I know you can specially request them from NASA, but it’s expensive and you can only request individually mailed sections.
Now, as for the software side, you can try GRASS GIS: http://grass.itc.it/ . This is an excellent piece of visualization software that goes beyond just google maps. Admittedly, it’s a bit of an overly complicated monster, but that’s because it provides so much different functionality in terms of many different visualiztion methods.
For street maps in the U.S., the U.S. Census bureau has been kind enough to release their data online, into the public domain in well documented formats: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/ (The “census tiger” maps)
Also, check clause 3F of the NASA open source license: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/nasa1.3.php
Correct me if I’m wrong, but based on that wording, doesn’t that mean that anyone who uses or modifies the software needs to register themselves with NASA? WTF?
It doesn’t compile, it has no usefull documentation.
The wx version is not developped any more (according to posts in forum) and they don’t say which version of wx they used so compiling it is a voodoo magic. Did I mention it doesn’t compile
It’s simply pathetic.
Earth3D on the other hand runs well thanks to being QT app so no hassle getting it to run. But the resolution is nowhere near GoogleE even for populated places in Canada.
I went to their download page but there is only some strange exe file and the “source” that, after unzipping, looks rather weird and not like something you can actually compile. At least not with the usual “configure ; make ; make install”. What’s going on here?
Ok, so Google earth isn’t open source. Why would it be? It cost Google thousands of dollars to acquire and build Google Earth. Now we want the source for free? Why would they do that? That is about the dumbest idea ever.
Now, we have an open source alternative that from the comments I’ve read isn’t as good. It is hard to install on Linux and whatnot. So, why is it so great? Because it might be able to work in Linux? The open source nature doesn’t automatically guarantee that, so why should we care? If someone makes it work then great, but until we have a great product that is actually better than Google Earth why should we sing praises of it?
This I think is a huge problem in the open source world. A new piece of software comes out that claims to be nearly as good as something else and is free. Rarely does an open source project end up being truly as good or god forbid being better than what the commercial software industry creates. The biggest reason is that most projects seek to emulate some other program because whoever started the project wanted to have the challenge of coding something like that or perhaps just was too cheap to buy the real thing.
What we should really be saying about open source software is that we don’t want clones of existing software, we want BETTER software. A great example of this would be Gaim and Firefox. Both are open source and did a great job of going BEYOND their commercial counterparts and doing it on multiple operating systems at the same time. Most other Open Source projects just end up as clones that are hopefully “as good” or maybe “good enough”.
How do we fix this? I say as a community we need to SUPPORT free software. If we PAID for our software (even the free software) then we could as a community have BETTER software that works everywhere, not just Windows. Until we all stop being cheapskates, open source software will still lag behind in features, polish, and usability.
The whole point of “free software” is that it is FREE. If you want to DONATE to an open source project, however, they will gladly accept it.
>The whole point of “free software” is that it is FREE
Nope, the whole point of free software is that you can do
whatever you want to do with it, like altering the source code.
There is nothing wrong with paying for open source software.
How much you want to bet this is w/r/t Google Earth and WorldWind?
http://www1.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2005/05_49AR.html
You lost:
http://www1.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2005/05_50AR.html
This is an awesome application! Open Source doesn’t automatically mean there is a Linux version. This would be a great teaching tool.
Like Gadrel said, they recently started working on a version that uses OpenGL (via the Tao Framework) so it will work cross-platform. It runs on .NET and Mono.
See: http://ww2d.berlios.de/index.php?id=30
They already have a “preview” version you can download, or you can get or view the latest sources via cvs: https://developer.berlios.de/cvs/?group_id=4129
The license is GPL.
It’s written in .NET. Big turn off.
Talk about narrow mindedness. It is a great peice of technology Who cares what it is written in.