World Wind

With its add-on and plug-in architecture, World Wind is already being expanded and updated with additional functionality and datasets. So what's next for an application that is already almost limitlessly expandable?

Imagine navigating through World Wind and seeing all of the weather systems on the planet in real-time. Or watching animations of changes in temperature anywhere on the planet over the course of a day?

Taking World Wind beyond just displaying previously collected data and turning it into a real-time window into life anywhere on the planet is a significant research endeavor, yet will provide World Wind with an immensely powerful architecture to visualize what is happening right now in the world around us. It's like a digital nervous system for Earth.

There's no question that World Wind provides users with stunning visual access to mountains of data collected on the Earth. Yet as with any data information system, the amount of information that can be accessed quickly can easily become an ocean of bits and bytes that is extremely difficult to navigate.

By integrating the latest techniques in data mining and developing some new ones for this unique format, the World Wind team is working hard to making it easy to locate and display the datasets users need most, without spending a great deal of time turning on and off the rapidly expanding layers of data.

Today, millions of digital cameras are being sold every month. From traditional SLR cameras to new point-and-shoot models, to cell phones, computers and a whole host of new and exciting electronic devices, the world is awash in digital imagery.

World Wind development is charting a course to be able to allow users from around the world to contribute their digital imagery into World Wind, providing a new way to experience planet Earth: from the perspective of any of its inhabitants.

Click image to hear Frank Kuehnel talk about the future of Lunar World Wind.

World Wind, and its cousin Lunar World Wind, already allow viewers to experience the Earth and Moon in great detail. Buy what about Venus, Saturn and Mars? In supporting NASA's needs for rapid visualization of planetary data for mission operations, the World Wind team is taking steps expand planetary visualization into the solar system, allowing users to navigate three dimensionally around the planets.

Ongoing NASA missions continue to deliver high fidelity interplanetary data back to Earth, and World Wind will be making this data easily accessible to NASA researchers, scientists, mission controllers and the public.