Open Source Alternative To Google Earth? 190
aws910 writes "Today, I fired up Google Earth to find that the 'points of interest' category had been removed, and a single checkbox is in its place. Certain layers are now entirely inaccessible. Google triggered a user revolt, but admitted fault, and promised to restore full functionality someday. In the meantime, I've found a lack of plausible alternatives. Bing seems nice, but Moonlight crashes the browser on any machine I use, and I'd rather use OSS anyway ... which made me realize there doesn't seem to be a good open-source alternative to Google Earth. Am I missing something?"
Licensing? Severs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's going to pay to license all those satellite images? Who's going to run the servers and pay for all the bandwidth consumed by such an application?
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:1, Insightful)
But it's OPEN SOURCE...
I drive a Pontiac Vibe - which as you know is a sister car to the Toyota Matrix.
Toyota seems to be dragging their feet on this whole pedal fix and reprogram issue. Even Steve Wozniak believes Toyota has a programming problem. As such, I'm in the market for a new control module for my acceleration subsystem. I'd like it to be open source. Does slashdot have any suggestions? Again, FREE and OPEN SOURCE are preferred.
Open Geospatial Consortium (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Earth is essentially a Web Map Server (WMS) The OGC http://www.opengeospatial.org/ [opengeospatial.org] has all the specifications for Web Map Severs and Clients. As others have mentioned, NASA WorldWind is a good example.
A blog to follow would be http://freegeographytools.com/ [freegeographytools.com]
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds just like what people were saying about Microsoft in the early 1990s.
Microsoft is dead. Google is the new Microsoft.
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, Google Maps, sure I use that all the time to find where something is, directions how to get to it...on my iPhone, it even shows traffic loads.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I read your post. IBM was the new Standard Oil. Microsoft was the new IBM. Google is the new Microsoft.
People were saying similarly positive and negative things about Microsoft 15+ years ago in a similar context: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Microsoft was seen as the Great Liberating Force against IBM.
I'm not particularly desperate for mod points today, I just think people need to bear this historical lesson in mind, which is the reason for my post. My £0.02.
Mod Parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Assuming you're referring to ESRI, (Environment Systems Research Institute), labeling them the 'top GIS company' is highly subjective. There are IMO many better platforms out there, open source included (see GRASS and/or QGIS). They just were lucky enough to secure some significant clients early on (USGS, USFS, USFWS, USDoI, DoD, NGS, etc.), which it turn forced all their subcontractors to adopt the same platform. Their software is bloated, cumbersome, about a decade behind emerging technologies, i.e., like Google Earth, and has a very closed architecture when it comes to integration.
Re:Licensing? Severs? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a friend that extols the goodness of open source, and Google. He conflates the two because Google uses open source. There is a difference between using open source and producing open source. Google produces services, and the bulk of their most valued services are behind closed source that can possibly have been derived from many open sources, fortunately for them they don't need to distribute that source since they don't distribute the software.
Microsoft is catching on to Google's ways however, learning to use open source to provide services.