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NASA WorldWind

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Adapted from the English Wikipedia article NASA WorldWind, available under CC BY-SA 4.0Updated 9 August 2025
NASA WorldWind
Company typeOpen-source software project
IndustryGeospatial software
Founded2003
FounderNASA
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsVirtual globe API, SDKs (Java, Android, Web)
Websitehttps://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

NASA WorldWind is an open-source virtual globe application programming interface distributed under the NOSA and Apache 2.0 licenses. Initiated by NASA in 2003, WorldWind allows organizations to develop interactive three-dimensional Earth visualizations for various uses including weather observation, urban and terrain mapping, vehicle tracking, geospatial data analysis, and educational purposes. Originally intended for desktop computers, the platform has grown through collaboration with the open source community since 2004. By 2017, versions accessible via web browsers and on Android devices had been introduced.

The initial release was constructed on the .NET Framework exclusively for Windows environments. The present-day WorldWind Java SDK is designed as a cross-platform toolkit aimed at developers rather than direct end-users, distinguishing it from standalone programs such as Google Earth. In 2009, WorldWind Java received NASA’s Software of the Year award. The system incorporates satellite imagery from NASA and the USGS, aerial photos, topographic maps, and supports geospatial formats like Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and Collada files to enhance spatial data representation.

Overview

First launched under the NASA Open Source Agreement license in 2004, WorldWind began as a Java-based application (with its latest release being version 2.1.0 in December 2016) and has since expanded to include a web-based platform along with an Android app. The web edition remains actively maintained and is available online.

The earlier .NET WorldWind application offered a wide array of plugins and included support for numerous celestial bodies: Earth, Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter along with its four Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto), as well as star and galaxy imagery from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

Users can manipulate these planetary models by rotating, tilting, and zooming. The platform displays more than five million place names alongside political boundaries, latitude/longitude grids, and other geospatial information. WorldWind.NET facilitates map browsing and geospatial data access through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) servers and supports Web Feature Service (WFS) for downloading place names. It also imports ESRI shapefiles and KML/KMZ formats to enable extensive data integration.

Additional capabilities include compatibility with .X files (DirectX 3D polygon mesh models) and sophisticated visual effects such as atmospheric scattering and dynamic sun shading.

High-resolution imagery within the United States allows detailed identification of structures, vehicles, and shadows in urban areas using USGS Digital Ortho and Urban Ortho layers. For regions outside the US, image resolution is at least 15 meters per pixel. Microsoft has granted permission for WorldWind to use Virtual Earth’s high-resolution imagery for non-commercial applications.

WorldWind incorporates digital elevation model (DEM) datasets sourced from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), National Elevation Dataset (NED), and ASTER instruments to provide three-dimensional renderings of terrain features including landmarks like the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest. Bathymetric data also enables detailed 3D visualization of underwater formations such as ocean trenches and mid-ocean ridges.

The user community frequently shares custom datasets through platforms like WorldWind Central or various blogs.

All images and videos produced using WorldWind with Blue Marble, Landsat, or USGS public domain resources are free to be edited, redistributed, and utilized commercially.

Add-ons and plugins

WorldWind allows for functionality enhancement through a variety of add-ons—compact extensions designed to expand capabilities. The main categories of add-ons include:

  • Point layers: XML configurations that depict placemarks as icons
  • Trail layers: defined paths representing routes or boundaries
  • Line features: XML lists rendered visually as lines or walls
  • Polygon features: XML lists displayed as filled polygons, either flat or extruded
  • Model features: XML files loading textured 3D meshes
  • Place names: labeled points such as cities or buildings
  • Image layers: detailed imagery focused on specific areas
  • Scripts: files that manage camera movements

Plugins are small applications developed in C#, VB, or J# and compiled by WorldWind during startup, allowing developers to introduce new functionality without modifying the core source code.

WorldWind Java

Initially designed exclusively for Windows using .NET and DirectX, WorldWind transitioned into a Java-based software development kit called WorldWind Java (WWj), with version 2.2.0 released in August 2020. Its API-driven design breaks down functionality into modular components, treating WorldWind itself as a plugin that can be used interchangeably, including through Python integration. This overhaul also enables deployment within web browsers as Java applets.

WWj serves as an SDK rather than a standalone program, supporting a wide range of applications created worldwide by government agencies and commercial firms. These applications include virtual globe viewers, satellite tracking tools, GIS platforms, photo editing software, F-16 flight simulators, and mission planning systems.

Android and the Web

NASA has introduced WorldWind SDKs tailored for Android OS and JavaScript-based web development, known respectively as WorldWind Android and Web WorldWind. Similar to WWj, these SDKs facilitate the creation of multiple applications instead of a single product.

Tutorials

  • NASA WorldWind SDK Tutorial: Created by the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster, this tutorial walks users through configuring Eclipse with the WorldWind API and developing polygons from geographic datasets sourced from Linked Open Data. It provides valuable guidance for developers across skill levels.

Forks and clones

  • WorldWind Earth is a community-driven project maintaining friendly forks of the three active WorldWind SDK versions. It offers a release stream featuring builds incorporating recent fixes and enhancements from WebWorldWind's development branch alongside selected community contributions. The WorldWindJS initiative is hosted on GitHub with distribution via NPM.
  • Geoforge project includes a fork of NASA WorldWind focused on open source tools for geosciences data management. Utilizing WorldWind's capabilities to visualize geo-localized geosciences objects, it establishes itself as a prominent platform within this specialized field.
  • Dapple is an open source derivative of NASA WorldWind developed by Geosoft targeting geoscience professionals. It offers straightforward integration with WMS servers and a user interface reminiscent of Google Earth, catering specifically to professional geoscience applications.
  • SERVIR-VIZ represents a customized adaptation of WorldWind created by IAGT for the SERVIR initiative, tailored to meet distinct geospatial visualization needs.
  • WW2D was a cross-platform open-source application built on Java and OpenGL, compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (x86 and x86-64 architectures), and Solaris on SPARC. It used imagery served from WorldWind's servers.
    • WW2D Plus One enhanced WW2D by adding support for 3D visualization.
  • Punt originated as a fork of the .NET NASA WorldWind project initiated by contributors within the free software community. Based on version 1.3.2 code, it introduced new features absent from versions 1.3.2 and 1.3.3, including multilingual capabilities. While currently limited to Windows, Punt has long-term ambitions to become cross-platform.

Available datasets

Initial download packages include low-resolution Blue Marble datasets; as users zoom closer, NASA servers supply higher resolution data dynamically. The aggregate volume of all datasets amounts to roughly 4.6 terabytes.

Animated data layers

Image and terrain datasets

  • Blue Marble Next Generation imagery
  • Landsat 7 imagery
    • NLT Landsat (both visible and pseudo color)
    • Geocover datasets from 1990 & 2000 (pseudo-color; 1990 layer derived from Landsat 4 & 5)
    • OnEarth imagery (visible and pseudo-color)
    • i-cubed imagery (visible spectrum)
  • USGS imagery collections
    • Digital Ortho Quadrangles (DOQ) – digitized black-and-white aerial photographs
    • Urban Area Ortho – composite color aerial photos covering major US metropolitan zones
    • Topographic map collections
  • Zoomit! community-sourced imagery layers
    • LINZ – composite color aerial photos of New Zealand
    • GSWA – topographic and geological maps for Western Australia
    • South Africa – satellite and aerial color imagery
    • US – composite color aerial photography of principal US metropolitan regions
  • SRTM terrain datasets including SRTM30Plus, SRTMv2, and USGS NED, featuring bathymetric information

Moon

  • Clementine data (40xx series in color, 30xx series in greyscale)
  • Hypsometric maps

Mars

  • MOC (Mars Orbiter Camera aboard Mars Global Surveyor)
  • MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter hypsometric maps from MGS)
  • THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System on Mars Odyssey)
  • MDIM (Mars Digital Image Model from the Viking mission)

Venus

  • Magellan radar imaging in both color and grayscale
  • Hypsometric mapping

Jupiter system

  • Jupiter
  • Callisto
  • Europa
  • Ganymede
  • Io
Survey imagery
  • Data accessible via the SDSS Server
  • Images from the WMAP Image Server
Footprint imagery
  • SDSS footprint coverage maps
  • FIRST (Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm) footprint data

Base resolutions

  • 500 meters (Blue Marble Next Generation)
  • 15 meters for Landsat images, excluding polar areas

Common high-resolution data

  • United States:
    • USGS Digital Ortho: grayscale images at 1 m resolution with near-complete coverage
    • USGS Urban Area Ortho: 0.25 m resolution
    • Zoomit!: ranging from 0.15 m to 1 m resolution
  • New Zealand:
    • Zoomit! layer based on LINZ data: 2.5 m resolution in both color and grayscale
  • Western Australia:
    • Zoomit! includes GSWA’s 250K surface geology mosaics, topographic details, Magnetic Intensity, and Bouger Gravity data
  • South Africa:
    • Zoomit! provides Spot5 coverage at 10 m resolution in color nearly fully covering the region, Robben Island at 0.5 m, and Johannesburg at 2.5 m resolution

Elevation resolution

  • United States: 30 m vertical resolution (1 arcsecond) from USGS NED data
  • Global coverage: 90 m vertical resolution (3 arcseconds) via SRTM data
  • Oceanic regions: resolutions of 2 arcminutes or finer

Age

  • Certain aerial photographs from the USGS originate in the early 1990s.
  • Imagery from Landsat 7 is from after 1999, with the exception of Geocover 1990.

See also

External links

Related profiles

EEarth3DEEclipse (software)GGreenfootPPersistent uniform resource locator
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