I just checked it out for the first time today and God damn is this thing is cool.
You need a Nvidia card for it to work (Or so says the website) and you need to register the thing (They send the main password to your address, so don’t make one up. Use a garbage account).
But I tell ya, it’s worth it.
Does it have everywhere?
And why does it need a 3d card I wonder. It looks like a system of zooming in and out on maps sent down the phone line. a computer with no 3d card at all could do that. Or is there more to it?
It’d be really really good if it was a model of earth, buildings cars everything, rather than a 2d map.
Does it have everywhere?
So far I haven’t hit a spot it doesn’t know.
It looks like a system of zooming in and out on maps sent down the phone line… is there more to it?
Yeah, a lot more. You can manipulate the map and move around ala a hand thingy. For instance, I live in Uptown Minneapolis and it’s a couple of minutes away from Minneapolis proper, but using the hand thingy, I can move myself over to Minneapolis in no time.
Further, you can pan around the spot you picked and even tilt it down to have a kind of angled view of what you’re looking at. You can move in and out pretty quickly too with the same tool bar thingy.
Put simply, it’s terraserver on steroids. First, you start off in space and punch in the place you want to see. Then, starting from outer space, it spins you in and slowly zooms into, and down to, about a ten block area around the site you picked. From there, with the tool function thingy, you can then whip around the city and move too and fro.
I did terraserver and thought it was OK. Nothing spectacular, just OK. I tried this (And am still playing around with it) and went ‘Holy Hanna!’.
It’d be really really good if it was a model of earth, buildings cars everything, rather than a 2d map.
Well yeah, but come on. Take what you can get.
I was just about to ask if it was better than the Microsoft Terraserver… good thing for preview.
It’s not just a 2D map – it has terrain (elevation) information. Check out the Grand Canyon. Now, buildings are still flat, but that’s because geologists/geographers don’t deal with man-made features (well, other than roads and artificial lakes). Maybe if they captured architectural data as well, then you’d have a 3D model of cities.
As for whether it has “everywhere” or not, Earthviewer’s FAQ says it “provides high-resolution data (1 meter or better) for over 50 major metropolitan areas, 15-meter resolution data through out the United Sates and 1-kilometer data for the entire world.”
Also, it does not require an nVidia card. The FAQ lists a number of other supported video processors.
Just started playing with it, and it’s neat! I just sent my family the view of the bldg in Boca Raton that was hit by Anthrax, and the buildings where I work right across the street.
Man, that is neat. Terraserver on steroids? Talk about understatement. Did you realize you can turn on road display, and it will give you a street map of the entire United States? I can’t wait to try it out at work tomorrow… it’s a bit slow over a 56k modem, but should just fly over a 10Mbit academic ethernet connection.
Airports and stadiums show up really well, especially around the bigger cities. NASA’s Super Guppy is plainly visible about midway down the west ramp at Houston’s Ellington Field, and right now I’m trying to spy on the stealth bombers at Whiteman AFB, just south of Knob Noster, MO. 
Is it better than Globexplorer?
It doesn’t even compare, Neidhart. Your site is a lot like MapQuest and the like (One of those has an option to see a satellite picture of the address you just punched in).
The earthviewer is far, far, far better. You can manipulate the image right, left, up, down, in and out and all around. Crank up the texture settings a bit and play around with the options and the next thing you know you’re ‘flying’ through the Grand Canyon.
Truly cool and different from anything I’ve seen before.
And just so you know, I’m not a big fan of loading shit onto my computer willy nilly. I don’t like having crappola right and left hogging up my space. Because of that, I’m skeptical of programs like this and people that say, ‘Hey, you gotta try this thing!’. In most cases, I ignore it. But in this case, I can’t stress it enough, and with enough sincerity that I think you and others would find it interesting.
Hey! I can see my house from up here!
Well I don’t have a GeForce or better Nvidia card (just a TNT2). But if you go to the Earthviewer site ( http://www.earthviewer.com/ ) you can get a version that works with more cards, but only for 14 days. I’ll try it when I get home tonight.
I thought it was neat enough to see how much it cost; $599 for one year subscription. DO’H! No way I can justify that.
Right after my previous message, I too downloaded the thing and found out it wouldn’t work with TNT2s. And 14 days isn’t enough free time to justify a multi-megabyte download. 
Dang, no hi-res pics of Nashville yet. Oh well.
I tried it out… pretty cool (but limited in High-Res areas)!
But, I checked out NYC, and apparently the scan of Manhattan was taken shortly after 9/11… a big hole with smoke still coming out! How creepy is that?
I haven’t tried Earthviewer because I only have a TNT2, but TerraExplorer seems to have some similar capabilities and it works with my setup. And I think it’s pretty impressive. You really need a high-speed connection to use it, though.