Diving Into Your Pool From Mars – Web-based Program Offers 3-D View Of The Earth

For anyone who has ever dreamed of flying like
a hawk over buildings, streets and trees, a
Web-based program offers bird’s-eye views of
the planet.

By NEIL McMANUS NY Times

EarthViewer 3D, from Keyhole, lets users navigate
through aerial photographs wrapped around a 3-D
representation of the globe. As a user dives toward
Earth, the program redraws to the screen at a
video-gamelike 60 frames per second.

Up to now, the primary users of EarthViewer 3D have
been real estate agents and city planners who paid
yearly subscriptions of $1,200. But starting next
month, a deal between Keyhole and Nvidia, the
maker of specialty computer chips, will bring the
software to consumers.

Nvidia will bundle a six-month trial version of EarthViewer 3D with some models of its 3-D graphics cards, which
are sold as PC add-ons and are included as built-ins in 60 percent of new PC’s. With the card, a user will be able
to buy a one-year subscription to EarthViewer 3D for $79. The price of the commercial version of EarthViewer,
which has additional features, will drop to $599.

A trial version is also available at EarthViewer’s Internet site (www. earthviewer.com). Those who fill out a form on
the site will receive a password by e-mail that will expire after two weeks.

The program must be run on a Windows-based PC with a broadband
connection. Viewers start with an image of a globe, which can be spun with the
mouse. Selecting a point and diving in, a user begins to see mountain ranges,
deserts and lakes, then cities and buildings, and then backyard swimming pools
and cars. EarthViewer 3D renders aerial photographs as fine as six square
inches per pixel, allowing viewers to see clearly, for instance, two elephants in a
yard at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

On-screen sliding controls let users zoom in and out and tilt the viewing angle to
see terrain in 3-D.

Keyhole licenses hundreds of thousands of aerial and satellite photographs.
Satellite images provide the program’s faraway views, and high-resolution aerial
photographs provide close-ups of more than 50 metropolitan areas, primarily in
the United States and Japan.

John Hanke, Keyhole’s chief executive, said that EarthViewer would include 250
of the world’s major cities by 2005. Paris and other European cities will be
available in coming months.

Keyhole updates EarthViewer’s images every 18 months, Mr. Hanke said, but it can quickly add updates. A week
after the World Trade Center attacks, for example, Keyhole updated EarthViewer to include a close-up of ground
zero. Keyhole also quickly added high-resolution coverage of Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan.

To gear up for the consumer market, Keyhole has been adding a feature to EarthViewer that includes additional
levels of data. The feature, which can be turned on or off, labels street names and lets users see icons over
schools, churches, hotels, grocery stores, Mexican restaurants — whatever the user chooses to highlight.
Clicking on an icon summons the name, address, phone number and Web link of the establishment.

Keyhole will soon add layers that enable users to read restaurant reviews and to book hotels, Mr. Hanke said.

He said that it was also working to add a layer that will let people switch from still photographs to existing traffic
cameras and Webcams, bringing live action to the close-up views.