Check it out

http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/worldwind/index.html

World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data to experience Earth terrain (or any planet with the data) in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there. Virtually visit anyplace in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps or along the African Sahara.

It's 250+ Mb so don't try and downloadit via modem

 

Lets play "I can see your house from here"

 

I've started DL is it free?

 

AK yes it is.

From the forum :-

What license are you releasing under?

Nasa Open Source license v1.3.

Will World Wind remain always free?

Chris:

The program itself is open-source and will always be free. Access to NASA provided data will also remain free. However, there might be private companies that want to provide their data through World Wind (perhaps magazines or encyclopedias) and perhaps might charge a fee for access to their data. As long as there are people who want NASA provided data, and are using World Wind for that purpose, it gives the departments in charge of providing data a reason to ask for more funding to improve bandwidth to the data.

 

exceleeeeent. Thanks for the heads up, kids will love it.

 

Bit big for avitars

I'v been using land_ocean_ice_lights a 10mb tiff from Visible Earth as a desktop ever since I spyed this stuff on /. , I'd love to get hold of a few of the special order Land Surface, Shallow Water, and Shaded Topography snaps of the Western Hemisphere 21,600 by 21,600 pixels (1km) (240 MB TIFF)** and the Eastern Hemisphere 21,600 by 21,600 pixels (1km) (400 MB TIFF)** from blue marble.

 

Slow down load, only around 12kb/s