Robert

World-Wind has a much higher resolution elevation model mesh with as result a more realistic view.

World-Wind also does a far better job rendering high resolution 3D images when you are not looking straight. Google Maps looks fuzzy around the edges with only the center in focus. This makes the 3D landscapes very unatractive.

Google Maps though is much, much faster loading bitmaps (And smarter about which tiles to load first). Google maps is also better at scrolling in 3D view where World Wind starts jittering the view.

I love the ability to overlay and adjust images from a local or internet source in google Earth. You can do this in World Wind but you have to edit some horrible XML files to do that.

But, Google Earth makes a mess of highres JPG images and renders them at a very poor quality Making the effort to add ortho photo’s a waste of time.

The KeyHole integration of places in Google Maps is a stroke of genious.

Google Earth is a nicer “Home” application that is easy to use but World wind has a far better 3D engine and the potential to be much, much better than Google Earth. It is a pitty that World Wind doesn’t have the resources and servers that Google Earth has.

If only the two could work together.

When Google bought Keyhole a few months back, several of us were moved to a sharp intake of breath. The potential of combining Google’s search capabilities with a three dimensional model of Earth had too much potential to ignore.

More…