Dont know how many of you know about an absolutely stunning piece of freeware developed by NASA called World Wind. Its a 3D globe and land mass viewing tool that allows you to pan and zoom on a 3D Earth globe down to very high detail. Unbelieveable tool. You can download ithere:http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/Its amazing to zoom in on say, Georenders Sky Harbor S86 airport or Ranger Creek and see the awesome accuracy of not only Richard Goldsteins work, but the tool can pan in 3D, so you can actually see the REAL life view of how an approach would look from various angles. Just think if I was a scenery designer, this tool would be a defacto requirement!Eric

Wow that looks absolutely stunning...and they made it available for free?!!!3D terrain-flyovers...anywhere! Wowowowwww....Dont u just wish FS9 would plug into this!!!!!!!!!Someday...someday....:)Thanx Eric!!!

Its frankly unbelievable. I've used it to correct a ton of AFCADs, and my son is working on his PPL. His instructor today told him what flightplan he needs to consider for his xcountries, and we not only used MSFS to practice fly them, but used World Wind to give a 3D look at what the approaches and local landmarks not only were...but what they looked like from the air. This tool is HUGE. I cant believe its freeware...but the image data is also 5 years old based on looking at our local area. I cant imagine what the military must have at its disposal thats either real time or very very close. Its real cool etc, but my main point of posting was for scenery designers to enjoy using it to compare for accuracy reasons.Eric

I use this and can confirm that it's a fantastic bit of freeware. Large initial download though. I've been looking at all the places I've visited in the past in fantastic detail - the maldives, Falkland Islands and various places in the States. Try going to Tucson and zooming down to Davis Monthan and the AMARC graveyard - fantastic!! You can also see the aircraft in the Pima museum. Again, terrific software - go and get it!Kev

Ok, that just wasted several hours of my life. Worse than that, I can see it's going to waste many more, and cost me megabucks in bandwidth.Everyone must download this, it's simply amazing!