Here is a non-exhaustive list of some geobrowsing tools with example screenshots and brief explanations. Each tool has a link to relevant posts in this Community blog. Please feel free to add links to useful software you have found, or correct mistakes!
is perhaps the most well-known Virtual Globe application currently available. It is a free but closed-source application that is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. The primary method for visualizing data in Google Earth is to create KML files, although there is limited support for other methods such as Web Map Services.. It is aimed at the general public, primarily as a search and browse tool, but has attracted a large community of people, including scientists, who have used the application for a very wide range of purposes, primarily because of the ease of visualizing data through KML.
is an open-source Virtual Globe application that is written in .NET and therefore only supports Windows operating systems. Future releases will be Java-based and hence cross-platform. World Wind provides access to a wide range of NASA satellite imagery. Data can be imported through tile servers, OGC Web Services and there is limited support for KML. Its focus is toward scientific users, so World Wind has a more specialist community than that of Google Earth. The future Java version will take an SDK approach, allowing users to write plugins more easily, and also allowing World Wind to be embedded in other software (applications and applets).
can be used as a standalone (free, Windows-only) Virtual Globe but it is best seen as a lightweight client to the (non-free) ArcGIS Server. It can import data in a very wide range of GIS formats (with good support for KML 2.0) and can perform data analysis on the client (using plug-ins and the associated .NET SDK) or the server (through the interface to ArcWeb Services).
iframe, 23-Apr-2008 14:56 (GMT)