Was looking at the GeoMapApp and Virtual Ocean applications tonight and noticed that they had updated their topography to the newest Smith and Sandwell predicted topography a while back with the elevation data and it looks quite nice.

3D Cuba and Ocean Floor

Hawaii as seen from the ocean floor

Virtual Ocean is a WWJava application that was developed by Columbia University.  Virtual Ocean integrates the GeoMapApp tool suite with the NASA World Wind 3-D earth browser to create a powerful new platform for interdisciplinary research and education.  To launch the application, click here.

For help on using Virtual Ocean, check the Help Page.  You can also see how to view data and add data to Virtual Oceans.

To get the best affect, set the vertical exageration to a high ammount.   Here is just a small sampling of the maps you can see in Virtual Ocean:

Well, not 100% exactly from WWJava, but GeoMapApp does have a feature that lets you load a spreadsheet, view the data on the WWJava globe and then export/save to several formats, you can save the entire table to KMZ or just a selection of data.

In the GeoMapAppVG application that I posted last week there is the ability to import a spreadsheet (as ascii table or in Excel format), view the placemarks in the map window ( GeoMapAppVG example) and then export the placemarks in a kml file using an interface that allows the user to choose which column or columns of the table are to be in separate folders in the kml file and how to scale the color of the placemarks in proportion to numeric values in the selected columns. The placemarks come up in GE scaled by color to the attribute chosen from the spreadsheet (Google Earth example). In the example the placemarks have been color-coded according to the percent CaCO3 in the sediment on the seafloor.

Edit: Forgot to mention, this is NOT using the libkml, this is an in-house developed solution for WWJava (that would be good to add to the core code as well).

Kind of funny how people are missing something very important with the CNet Article about “Google Ocean”.. (Never mind the fact you could view 3D oceans way back in 2004 when WorldWind was released), the screen shots that CNet shows use GeoMapApp and GeoMapapp, to anyone that reads my blog would know, is built on WWJava and leverages the same data as WorldWind uses as well as multibeam and predicted topography compiled by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University.

About the only difference between a Google Ocean and what is already usable now, is KML placemarks.  Unless Google is going to spend millions to re-map the ocean bottoms.. the data will be the same for all virtual globes.

GeoMapApp is a data exploration and visualization tool that is continually being expanded as part of the Marine Geoscience Data System.  GeoMapApp is an integrated mapping application developed at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

GeoMapApp is a Java application that has a new version just released that uses the WorldWind.java api code to include a virtual glove view of the data.  GeoMapApp provides ocean bathymetry tiled at 5 levels of resolution. The viewport can be 2-D in Mercator projection (default) or 3-D using an adaptation of the NASA WorldWind classes.

GeoMapApp is an on-going project of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.  The elevation data is from the Shuttle Topography mission.

You can download the application either as a zip file or a tar file.  The help file is online for browsing.

Some initial screen shots of GeoMapApp.

From the initial start up you can select a virtual globe view or Mercator view or a South polar view.  The following screen shots will be of the virtual globe view.

Select virtual globe view.  From the menu choices you can view different data from tile servers or WMS servers and other sources as well.  Below you can save the current view and change the exaggeration of the elevation.  To the right you can see the position of the cursor, altitude of the camera and the elevation of that point.

3D elevation view of a deep ocean trench.  Scale in the upper left show the depth by color.

Different imagery data, this one shows the age of the crust.

Displaying data point in GeoMapApp.  Clicking a point, highlights the information in the screen shot below.  This data being shown shows all the drill locations used to gather scientific information.

Table view of related data to the screen shot above.  clicking on the point highlights the related row in this table.

This is just a small amount of the data that can be found in GeoMapApp.  But more than that, this is a very good example of how useful the WWJava API is, instead of having a full virtual globe and adding to it, you just add the globe view to your application.