NASA World Wind
World Wind is a NASA-developed, open source desktop mapping application. A geographic data visualization tool, it lets users visualize a wide range of Earth data in a 3-D globe environment. World Wind allows the interactive selection and visualization of a number of data sets, including several global Landsat mosaics, detailed orthophotos and topographic maps for the United States, and the ability to add layers from external servers that support the Web Mapping Service (WMS) standard.
World Wind is currently only available for Windows PCs (Windows 2000 or later). NASA is currently working on World Wind Java which will work on multiple platforms, including Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
Data layers from the WDC served via WMS can be viewed in World Wind. To add WDC services to World Wind, the WMS browser configuration file located at %world wind install folder%\Config\Earth\Tools\wms_server_list.xml must have this server configuration information added.
<Server>
<Name>SEDAC Population Density Layers from GRUMP</Name>
<ServerUrl>http://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapserver/map/GRUMPv1</ServerUrl>
<Version>1.1.1</Version>
<Abstract>Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project population data from SEDAC</Abstract>
</Server>
<Server>
<Name>Poverty Mapping Project layers</Name>
<ServerUrl>http://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapserver/map/POVERTYv1</ServerUrl>
<Version>1.1.1</Version>
<Abstract>Infant Mortality Rates and Underweight Children data from SEDAC</Abstract>
</Server>
Additional information on adding WMS servers using the WMS browser is available at World Wind Central.
