Hot on the trail of Google Earth comes NASA World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html). I haven't installed it yet but it promises 3D rendering, catalogs all natural disasters, simulation of hurricane dynamics, and much more.

It's been around for a while. I tried it a few months ago, it's probably more educationally useful than Google Earth, but nothing like as much fun :) And the interface isn't too user-friendly. Worth a play though..

I tried Nasa Wind bout 3 months ago, and to be honnest it's really rubbish... The rendering is really poor ! Even though Google maps is very poor too, Google Earth is good, it got my mate from France to look at Sheffield on t'internet and discover a bit, Nasa Wind didn't.

This is supposed to be an updated version :wink:

Originally posted by vidster
This is supposed to be an updated version :wink:
Current version is v1.3.1.1 - I've had 1.3 for a few months now, and I don't think I'll bother when the major updates they list are things like "Estonian and Hungarian installer translations added" ;)

Originally posted by vidster
This is supposed to be an updated version :wink: Coz I mean Nasa Wind was all spiked and didn't render at all ! Well it did, at almost full back zoom !

Google earth is a browser.

It's a very powerful tool indeed. I'm still happily flabbergasted they are giving it away!