xearth (was: Re: Linux OS)

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon Oct 18 13:32:17 2004

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 17:41 +0000, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 11:46:49AM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
> > I remember thinking how cool Linux was because it had xearth and Windows
> > didn't :-)
>
> That is my background on my _on-topic_ SPARC desktop.
>
> I've been hacking xearth recently to render the Polar regions white.
> Unfortunately, the shape tables are not commented, so I have to go
> through manually to determine what shapes correspond to what land
> features.

Now that's pretty cool. Will you be releasing it into the wider
world? :)

I wonder if a modern version is overdue that does do some pretty good
shading approximation of all the landmasses? And even better, some form
of chaotic cloud approximation to give it that real 'earth from space'
feel!

The former's probably not *that* complex (just potentially a lot of
effort to set the static data up). I have no idea if the latter's really
possible for a desktop machine, even with some really basic
approximation of clouds...

cheers

Jules
Received on Mon Oct 18 2004 - 13:32:17 BST