Five months after Alpha 0.4’s release, Pat Murris has news that Alpha 0.5 is now out and ready for users and developers. You can download the source files from here and you can see online demos here.

From the release README.txt:

Change Summary for 0.4 to 0.5:

• – Includes a WMS server.
• – Major changes to the view code – the eye can now go very close to the ground, and underwater. New interface methods.
• – New Restorable interface to save and restore objects state to/from an xml document. Implemented in UserFacingIcons, Annotations, Polyline, View…
• – Flat Worlds with projection switching are now usable.
• – Mars and Moon globes with elevations and full layersets from NASA servers.
• – MGRS, UTM and TM coordinates classes and converters in geom.coords
• – Tiled image layers will not wait for lower res tiles to load before showing the needed ones.
• – New layers:
  • – NAIPCalifornia.
  • – BMNGWMSLayer gives access to any of the 12 BMNG 2004 layers.
  • – OpenStreeMapLayer.
  • – MGRSGraticuleLayer and UTMGraticuleLayer.
  • – CrosshairLayer.
• – All non Earth specific layers have been moved from layers.Earth to layers: CrosshairLayer, FogLayer, ScalebarLayer, SkyColorLayer, SkyGradientLayer, StarsLayer, TerrainProfileLayer and WorldMapLayer.
• – StatusBar moved from examples to util.
• – New GeographicText support – used for placenames.
• – More accurate scalebar.
• – Increased performance for Polyline.
• – Icons can have a background image.
• – WWJApplet example updated with new capabilities.
• – Build script completly revised.
• – SurfaceImage from an http source.
• – Zoom with middle mouse button down and drag up/down.
• – AlwaysOnTop property for icons and annotations.
• – New Mipmap flag for TiledImageLayer
• – Better TiledImageLayer image capture and composition.
• – Enhanced NITFS/RPF support.
• – Better gps tracks support
• – New examples: AlarmIcons, BMNGTwelveMonth, FlatWorldEarthquakes, MGRSGraticule, RemoteSurfaceImage, ViewLookAround, Mars, Moon…
• – Also includes an application for Search And Rescue support.
• – Many other bug fixes and changes…