This chart compares Google Earth and World Wind against a handful of other software packages which might all be loosely termed "Earth Viewers". Rough comparisons are drawn to several free (and Free) tools and one commercial one (ArcGlobe) all of which have very different emphases.
| NASA World Wind (link) |
Google Earth (link) |
VTP (link) |
planet-earth.org (link) |
osgPlanet (OSSIM) (link) |
osgdem/ osgviewer (link) |
ArcGlobe (link) |
ArcGIS Explorer (link) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paging of huge datasets | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Streaming over internet | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | possible(4) | yes |
| Includes access to high-quality commercial imagery | no | yes | no | no | no | no | no | yes |
| Unified coordinate system ("space to face") | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Get elevation of camera and cursor | no | yes | yes | no | no | yes? | yes | yes |
| Intended for developers (Open API) |
yes | no | yes | not yet | yes | yes | yes (GIS only) |
no |
| Intended for end-users (Feature-rich GUI) |
yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | yes | yes |
| Import user elevation data | possible¹ | no | yes | possible² | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Import user image data | possible¹ | yes
(requires manual georef) |
yes | possible² | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Import image data at runtime | no | no | no | no | no | yes | yes | |
| Generation/use of datasets (elevation/imagery) |
n/a | with GUI (imagery only) |
with GUI | yes (how?) | with config script (.kwl) |
with command- line; very slow |
with GUI | with GUI |
| Import GIS data | no? | no (not in free version) |
points and vectors only |
possible | no | no | yes | yes |
| Import 3D Models | no | yes (from KML) |
yes | yes (demo only) |
yes | yes | yes(3) | no |
| Buildings | no | yes (simple extrusion) |
yes | yes (demo only) |
no | no | yes
(simple extrusion) |
no |
| Roads | no | no (only as vectors) | yes | no | no | no | no (only as vectors) | no (only as vectors) |
| Vegetation | no | no | yes | no | no | yes? (with osgforest) |
yes? | no |
| Create Culture at runtime | n/a | just placemarks | fences, plants, 3D models |
no | n/a | n/a |
partial(5) |
no |
| Create GIS features | no | yes (limited) | no | no | no | no | yes | ? |
| Free (as in price; gratis) | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes |
| Free (as in freedom; libre) | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no |
| Estimated size of active user community | hundreds? | hundreds of thousands |
hundreds | dozen | dozens | hundreds? | thousands | tens of thousands? |
¹: Raul Aguilera Hermosilla writes: "World Wind, being open as it is, uses "generic" formats for the data (elevation and images) with a rather awkward (but explained fully within the user groups) tiling scheme. What you can do is either replace or superimpose your elevation files or images. This is not for the end user but anyone with enough patience (to find the appropriate details) can do it. I haven't had the time to actually do it but from what I saw I am pretty sure it can be done."
²: Chris writes: For planet-earth you use the Rez toolset to generate the elevations+imagery. You then have to transfer it to server and there is some manual editing to include. There *is* an interface online to upload it and have it positioned but there are bugs in it at present.
3: Can directly import 3DS, SketchUp, VRML and OBJ file formats, with textures.
4: Streaming: ArcGlobe acts as a client. Basically for vectors you need one of the server products (ArcIMS, ArcServer or the new image server), or a web server serving a raster file format which supports streaming (ECW and perhaps a few others).
5: ESRI says: "ArcGlobe is an interactive 3D GIS, which means that 3D “culture” objects are treated as symbology attached to point locations. If you have 3D symbology set up, you can add points to insert/position 3D objects on a terrain surface. Various people have created add-on interfaces which let you pick the 3D object first, then create a point for it – but these are free extensions, and not in the normal GUI as shipped. ArcGlobe does not provide a 3D content creation environment for “culture” items. We generally suggest the use of @Last Software’s SketchUp, because it supports georeferencing. However, any 3D surface modeler which can export to the 4 supported 3D file formats above should work."