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Product Reviews
Education/Reference
Motherplanet Earth Explorer [Computer Shopper]
COMPANY: Motherplanet PRICE: $50 (around ?7)
RATING:  ISSUE:
196 DATE: Jun 04
 Earth
Explorer uses satellite data to present an intimate view of the
entire planet, complete with borders, cities, rivers and a mass
of other information. Backed by an extensive online database, not
only is this a serious educational resource, it's also a fascinating
diversion.
The software allows you to zoom into a model globe rendered at
a resolution of 1km per pixel. Zoom into the Amazon delta and you'll
see ugly strip-farming scars snaking through the jungle. Hover over
Egypt and you'll see the lush banks of the Nile meandering through
the desert and into the Mediterranean.
The full download is 96MB of compressed geographical information.
You can just download the software without the database, which is
only 4.36MB and costs $30 (around ?7). Using this version, as you
zoom in, an online database fills in detail on the 1km scale. The
database uses a clever caching mechanism to ensure the program accesses
the online database as efficiently as possible over a dial-up connection,
but naturally you'll get faster results with broadband.
Earth Explorer also provides current information on 267 countries
and regions, 15,000 islands, 40,000 cities and 1,700 earthquakes,
all of which it presents in a list panel with plenty of Sort By
options. Locating Bam in Iran, for instance, provides statistics
and a large amount of technical information about December 2003's
devastating earthquake, and links to reports on the event. The list
panel also provides details such as country and city population
and its sortable nature makes it easy to look up, say, the largest
island.
As well as scrolling over the planet's surface, Earth Explorer
enables you to drag the current view around and centre on the cursor,
which is handy when you want to zoom accurately into an area. A
measurement tool allows you to select a point and drag a ruler over
the Earth's surface to measure distance.
It would be nice to be able to control the scroll speed, especially
at high magnification. The colours, fonts and lines are not configurable,
either, which is confusing at low magnification. You can turn cities
on or off, but it would have been useful to filter their display
by, say, population so that the globe doesn't look like a Christmas
tree when you zoom out. These are minor criticisms, however.
What really strikes you as the Earth scrolls majestically by is
what a big planet this is and how peaceful it seems from space.
A look at the troubled Holy Land region, for instance, reveals a
gigantic bay area flanked by mountains, desert and a deep blue sea.
Earth Explorer can't quite match up to a sightseeing trip on the
space shuttle, but it's the closest any of us will probably get,
and it's an absorbing and educational piece of software.
By Jon Thompson
Motherplanet
Earth Explorer review from ComputerShopper
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