2 Using World Wind

2.1 Starting World Wind

World Wind is located in the top level of the Start menu.

1. Start World Wind

2.2 The World Wind Interface

World Wind has a very simple interface, comprised of a menu bar, a tool bar, and a viewport.

2.2.1 Tool bar Buttons

	Search	Opens the Place Finder	(2.3.4)
	Position	Toggles the Position layer	(2.4.3)
	Lat/Lon Lines	Toggles the Latitude/Longitude Lines layer
	Layer Manager	Opens the Layer Manager	(2.4)
	WMS	Opens the Web Mapping Server Browser	(3.2)
	Animated Earth	Open the Animated Earth Manager	(3.4)
	Rapid Fire MODIS	Opens Rapid Fire MODIS	(4)
	Astrobiology Kit	Toggles the Astrobiology Kit layer
	Boundaries	Toggles the Borders layer	(2.4.2)
	LandSat Visible	Toggles the LandSat Visible layer	(2.5)
	Landsat Pseudo	Toggles the LandSat Pseudo layer	(2.5)
	USGS 1-Meter	Toggles the USGS aerial photography layer	(2.5)
	USGS Topographical	Toggles the USGS topographical (street map) layer	(2.5)
	Lewis & Clark Trail	Toggles the Lewis & Clark trail markers
	Placenames	Toggles the Placenames layer	(2.4.1)
	Key Chart	Opens the keyboard shortcut reference	(5.1)
	World Wind Website	Opens the World Wind website

2.3 Navigating the Earth

2.3.1 Panning

There are several ways to pan (travel) to locations on the Earth in World Wind.

• Click the place you wish to pan to.
• Click with your mouse and drag the Earth around.

2.3.2 Zooming

Normally you will use one of two ways to zoom in on an area of interest or back out again.

• Click both mouse buttons and drag; up to zoom in, or down to zoom out.
• Use your scroll-wheel to zoom in and out.

2.3.3 Rotating

The SRTM¹ data presented in World Wind allows you to see the Earth’s features in 3D² .

1. Zoom in far enough for the features that you wish to view to stand out.
2. Hold your right mouse button and drag downward³ to tilt the globe.
3. Holding your right mouse button and dragging up restores your original tilt.

2.3.4 Place Finder

The easiest way to locate a specific place is with the Place Finder.

1. Type in some words found in the name of the place that you are looking for. Capitals and spelling matter.
2. Click Search, or press the [Enter] key.
3. Wait. This may take a long time.
4. Locate the place that you are looking for in the list and click on it. In this case, Mount St. Helens is the first one on the list. You can tell because it says “Feature Type=summit”, and it is a mountain that we are looking for.
5. Choose Go.

2.3.5 Locating a Place by its Coordinates

If you already know the coordinates of a place you wish to see, you may enter them into the Place Finder and then click go.

2.4 Layers

World Wind has much information to present, and it is divided up into layers. A layer is a grouping of one specific type of information and may be easily toggled on and off. Many layers have dedicated tool bar buttons, but the Layer Manager allows you much more control.

2.4.1 Placenames Layer

The Placenames layer shows the names of places on the Earth, in increasing detail as you zoom in. I recommend turning the Placenames layer off whenever you do not need it, as it tends to cover up other data.

2.4.2 Boundaries Layer

The Boundaries layer shows country borders⁴ . I recommend turning the Boundaries layer off whenever you do not need it, as the program runs faster without it.

2.4.3 Position Layer

The Position layer serves to tell you the location of what are looking at, and where you are looking at that location from. It is important to note that the latitude, longitude, altitude, and terrain elevation displayed refer to the location at sea level that is in the center of the viewport, not the terrain. These images show that relationship:

        

You may toggle a crosshair in the center of the viewport from the View menu or by pressing [F9].

2.4.4 Blue Marble

The Blue Marble project aims to create true-color images of the Earth and make them available to the public free of charge. World Wind uses the Blue Marble imagery to draw the globe when you are zoomed very far out, right up until high-resolution satellite imagery takes its place. While the Blue Marble images are beautiful to look at, at high zoom levels they are not detailed enough to be useful. At that point, they sometimes begin to cause problems such as flickering and random polygons as you rotate or pan. If you experience these problems, you may turn of the Blue Marble images:

1. Open the Layer Manager.
2. Uncheck both of the Blue Marble layers.
3. Don’t forget to turn them back on when you zoom out again.

2.5 Satellite Imagery

As you should have noticed already, when you get to a certain zoom level, higher resolution satellite imagery is loaded. You can tell which area is currently being downloaded by a red box that appears around it, and a NASA logo in the top-right corner indicates when the NASA server is being accessed. There are two different satellite image sets to choose from, the LandSat 7 true-color image, and the LandSat 7 pseudo-color image. You may also look at the USGS (United States Geological Survey) aerial photographs, which provide very high resolution images of the entire United States, and the USGS Topographical images, which are very detailed street maps that you may zoom into.