Slashgeo

The Geography 2.0: Virtual Globes blog shares with us NASA World Wind's Roadmap. From the blog summary: "According to the site, v.1.3.4 is expected in April. The developers will skip v1.4, and v1.5 will be released in September/October 2006. The road map enumerates several of v.1.3.4 features, including: 1) the ability to refresh elements in a layer, 2) improved implementation of shapefiles, 3) elevation data will include ocean bathymetry, 4) Mars and Venus datasets will be available--users will be able to access ten different Mars datasets, and 5) Sloan Digital Sky Survey SkyServer imagery will be accessible."

The Bull's rambles blog shares the development status of NASA World Wind 1.3.6, 1.4 and 1.5 and describe some new features. From the blog: "I'll list some new features now so you all know what to expect, this is not a comprehensive list it just shows the most visible changes, there are also more 'behind the scenes' changes which will make add-on/plug-in developers drawl, such as the 3Dmodel and 3Dpolygon code." In the list, you'll find: Time controller, Atmospheric scattering and sun shading, 3D compass and scalebar, Integrated web browser and Smaller footprint. Meanwhile, you can also read import cartography's questions about the efficiency of the NASA World Wind development.

Anonymous Voxel writes "NASA World Wind 1.4 (RC1) is out for bug finding and testing. Earth Is Square has the announcement. Here are the coresponding Wiki Pages and Forum post as well. Bug submissions can be left at either location." You'll find additional information from the Bull's ramble blog. See also this previous story on the status of 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5.

The Earth is Square offers informative tidbits about the upcoming NASA World Wind Java release. Expect a public beta in April. From the short entry: "Q: Will WWJava be like the .Net version? A: Not at first. the .Net version of World Wind has been in development since 2004. The Java code has been in development since October 2006." Chad is also collecting question for his interview with the NASA WW team. Update: 02/12 21:47 GMT by S :The EiS blog added more answers regarding NWW's 1.4 release.

The Earth is Square tells us why a java version of NASA World Wind was developed. From this page with the answer: "DOE's National Nuclear Security Agency competitively selected NASA World Wind as the visualization platform of choice and asked the NASA Ames World Wind team to refactor the software into an API-centric cross-platform SDK solution. Today we are demonstrating that cross platform solution World Wind Java (WWJ)."

Because you can't legally install Google Earth (Free or Plus) at work, virtual globes licenses are important. The Earth is Square shares info from Patrick Hogan, the NWW project manager explaining the NASA World Wind licenses. From the post: "Patrick Hogan [the NASA World Wind project manager] has stepped up and posted this to the mailing list as an explanation to the licensing and how they all interact [...] Rather than try to decipher each of the issues expressed regarding the World Wind (WW) license, it should be clearly stated that NASA World Wind.NET and NASA World Wind Java, under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) license, allow for anyone to make 'changes to the core' and redistribute. This 'core' will necessarily fall under the NOSA. But, this *does not restrict* the ability for third-parties to combine the World Wind core with their proprietary extensions or applications that leverage this core."