See Your World From a New Perspective

World Wind is a visualisation application that uses satellite imagery and other data to present the world in startling new ways. If you’ve got a PC with a fast graphics card, then this application is quite stunning. You can "fly" over the Earth’s surface using your mouse.

While the application comes with a fair bit of topographic data, as you zoom into points on the Earth’s surface, more detailed data is fetched from NASA’s servers to build up the picture. Add-ons such as data from scientific visualisation servers allow you to see events such as weather patterns, floods or forest fires.

It’s an incredible teaching resource that could have only been dreamed about a few years ago, and then would only have been available to a select few researchers. Now anyone with a modern PC and an Internet connection can tap into this data and display it in ways that are immediately understandable. I reckon that in under 5 years we’ll be seeing mobile phones, cameras, laptops and tablet PCs with GPS built-in as standard. Then you’ll be able to retrace your travels, or use the virtual Earth as a way of organising your holiday snaps. Simply "fly" to Barcelona and view your photos as you move through the city.