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This is amazing. NASA has made it's satellite imagery available for several spectra and classes for the Whole World in the program "Worldwind". If you are in the U.S., you can pick out your own house from the USGS data. For the rest of the world, it's still pretty darn detailed.
You will need .5GB of HD space (180MB download) and it will prompt you and connect for DX9.0c and a couple of other things...but it's ALL FREE!
I'm still learning how to use it, but I'm awed!

You already know you can see you own home...but here is a low res (it's much better on my computer and not uploaded to the gallery here) view of my wife's home....the little burg of Mafra, Brasil....NOT a big place...trust me! In my view, we can make out the bridges and roads in town....

Be amazed. and get the download at:
worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

Go to gallery and see this better in larger view...still not as good as my original...

WOW!!!!! This looks awesome!!!!! I'll be sure to take a picture of my house as soon as I get it working...

That is cool it looks better than the one i play with.
terraserver.com/

Dudes....it's even 3D...if you look down on hills, as you move around, your perspective changes to reflect that....it's like flying overhead (if your system specs are up to the requirements).
You can set a location and also have the earth moving as it would if you were in a fixed point and the earth turns beneath you. It's amazing...

I know Googld Maps has a bunch of satellite images. However, you have to be living in a decent sixe town in the US to get a good res. Has anyone ever used keyhole? That's supposed to be awesome...

I downloaded this last week and have been playing with it. It is, indeed, absolutely freakin' COOL!!

The USGS Urban high-res stuff isn't available for many areas and focuses mainly on large cities, so my house isn't available (maybe that's a good thing!) and the black & white satellite shots which are the next choice below that are awesome in their own right...enough to pick out houses, cars, all that. You can tell it took a long time to amass all this data, because in those satellite shots (I forget the name but they're the next best option to the USGS Urban data), my house - make that my whole community - isn't there, and my house is about 12 years old.

Last night I paid a visit to my old home town of Willits CA....Holy damn, found my old grade school, our old house, both creeks where we used to fish, then the main street of town and the house my Grampa bought and lived in for a while, then the high school, and the football field where I played Pop Warner and High School football as a good ol' Willits Wolverine, and the road that led up to the mountains that we used to run cross-country miles and miles uphill to the airfield NW of town and back, and also where I took my first flying lessons....heck you can even read the runway numbers!....Man the old memories came flooding back seeing all this in detail!!!!!

And BTW if you want a COOL airfield to fly landing practive in, try O28, Ellis Field there in Willits...perched right on top of a small mountain, pretty dang slick.

Great find, Ascout!!!!

...and you will notice that, just as they did with Area 51, high detail shots of the secret JG300 base..the "Pig Sty" have been "deleted" from the data base. Thus...no secret seaplane base at KORS (or is it that the camoflage is that effective?!).

Naturally, Area Fifty-TWO and Roraima Spy Facility are also not viewable.

No OPSEC lapses here, No Sir!

yea I have been checking it out also, very cool but I wish you could zoom in a little more. I guess because my area is rural it's a little harder to see things in detail.

I was playing around with another one a couple of months back and it had more of a closer/detailed zoom but cant remember the site, will have to search again.

I'm STILL having a blast with this program!

I wanted to set out and see if I could find the Nasca Lines...you know, those mysterious lines in the South American plains that have all the animal images etc. that you can only recognize from the air ("Chariots of the Gods" stuff I guess).

I think I got pretty close, the resolution isn't high enough to show the "artistic" images (map, inset) but for sure I believe these are the large criss-crossing lines featured in the stories and pictures. Maybe if ya squint....

The area is right - Nasca plains, about 200Nm south of Lima, near San Jose and El Ingenio areas....dang I wish the USGS images covered this area!



If anyone wants to pick up the search from where I left off, the coordinates are:

goto/world=Earth&l...;alt=21577

(Just highlight that line, do a "copy", then go into WorldWind and do a "Paste Coordinates" from the Edit menu).

WAIT! COOL! Load Worldwind and just click that link! What a GREAT feature!!!!

WOW MAN!!!!

These link-things are frikkin WICKED!!!!! They work even if ya don't have the program loaded, it launches it automatically....and then hang on for a WILD ride! WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Here's my house (or would be if the sat images weren't so old!)

goto/world=Earth&l...;alt=21889

Wow! I didn't believe it till I tried it! awesome! I am a little perturbed by the lack of high res photos, though. I know Google at least has some great recent high res photos of most US cities. Too bad NASA couldn't follow along. Cool anyways!

EDIT: Never mind, all I had to do was change my texture type USGS Digital Ortho seems to work just fine!

Yup...and once ya got a cool place to share, from the Edit menu, do a "Copy Coordinates" and then in your post do a CTRL-V to paste from the Windows clipboard...voila....automatic link for anyone who has this installed!

Frikkin' SLICK......

Alrighty...

My dorm complex at university:
goto/world=Earth&l...p;alt=1167

If you head west a little ways, you'll find an airport outside of town. There is where I do all my flight training. If you look, you can see aircraft on the ramp, some waiting for takeoff, and even one on final and one on downwind.

Something I noticed on some other satellite image, and it appears on this one too. (make sure you're in USGS Urban Area Ortho. Also, just because it gets annoying, put Vertical Exaggeration to 0.)
Is something wrong with this picture?
goto/world=Earth&l...mp;alt=272

And just as a side note, you guys should see the FAQ and see what they're planning on doing with all this data! Awesome!

"It's probably overkill, but we like it that way."

North America has obviously been mapped in greater detail than other places...But zoom out a little and half a mile from the coastline of the North Sea is where I call home.

goto/world=Earth&l...;alt=22501

Something I noticed on some other satellite image, and it appears on this one too. (make sure you're in USGS Urban Area Ortho. Also, just because it gets annoying, put Vertical Exaggeration to 0.)
Is something wrong with this picture?

It appears the buildings are leaning different directions, or they didn't level off the ground before building

My house.

goto/world=Earth&l...p;dir=-0.1

If you put your mouse cursor in the upper right hand corner and click 4 times it will put you over Edwards AFB.