I stumbled across a new (to me anyways) website from Microsoft Live Labs called SeaDragon which will process huge image files and make them available in such a way that they can easily be viewed online.
I thought I’d see what happened if I gave it a 650 megapixel, 580 megabyte TIF file to process. I fully expected it to say the image was too large, or return some other kind of error, but it processed the file with no problem and processed it very quickly. SeaDragon even hosts the image tiles for free.
Kudos to Microsoft Live Labs on this one, I’m fully impressed. Now we just need Google to create a similar service and make the maps and tiles available as overlays in Google Earth and/or Google Maps.
I have a bunch of maps that I think would be great to host on SeaDragon. Several are available below. I will add some more as I have time.
Don’t forget to click on the little icon in the bottom right corner to view it in full-screen mode.
United States Terrain Map (Albers Projection, 1.5 Gigapixels)
Global Terrain Map (Geographic Projection)
Winkel Tripel Projection
Interrupted Goode Homolosine Projection
Orthographic Projection
Source of data:
Space Shuttle’s Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) /
Scripps Institution of Oceanography /
NASA’s Blue Marble imagery /
GTOPO
California Terrain Map
Montana Terrain Map
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There are many ways to visualize the terrain and topography of the Earth’s surface on a map. The terrain maps presented here were created by combining data from
In short, the SRTM and GTOPO elevation data was used to add hill shading to the Blue Marble imagery. The resulting terrain maps show an amazing level of detail and allow us to see the surface of the Earth in a way that is not possible by viewing the source data by itself.
Each map is available as a a standard 32-bit color GeoTIFF file. The maps are being made available under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license. Contact Me via this form if you would like to discuss using them for commercial purposes.
The maps currently available are listed below:
Global Terrain Maps:
Country Terrain Maps (DOWNLOAD HERE):
Updated 7/10/2010
The country terrain maps are at 90 meter resolution at Geographic Projection. I will continue to add more countries and areas throughout the world as I have time. If you have a specific request, post a comment and I will try to accommodate it.
Afghanistan
Albania
Australia_NE
Australia_NW
Australia_SE
Australia_SW
Austria
Belarus
Belgium-Luxembourg-Netherlands
Bahrain-Kuwait-Saudi_Arabia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania
France
Germany
Hungary
Iran
Iraq
Israel-Lebanon-Palestine
Japan
Jordan
Kosovo
Macedonia
Moldova
Montenegro
New Zealand
North Korea
Oman
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea-Solomon Islands-Indonesia
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Korea
Spain
Tazmania
Turkey
UAE
United Kingdom
Vietnam
Yemen
US State Terrain Maps (Low resolution JPG files are linked below. Download high resolution (90 meter) JPG/GeoTIFF files from here)
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The Clean Earth overlays replace the default Google Earth textures at high altitudes for the entire Earth. Instead of seeing inconsistent strips of different aerial/satellite photography that look very unrealistic, you can now see a nice clean natural looking Earth surface. The Clean Earth overlays use hill shading to exaggerate the vertical elevations of the Earth’s surface, which highlights hills, valleys and mountains much more than is possible with the default Google Earth surface. As you zoom in close to the Earth, the Clean Earth overlays will automatically fade away, allowing the default Google Earth surface to become visible.
The Clean Earth textures were created by combining NASA’s Blue Marble textures with global elevation/bathymetric data created by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is derived from from the Space Shuttle’s SRTM mission and other sources.
There are two versions of the Clean Earth overlays. The High Resolution version provides a much greater level of detail and will be visible at lower altitudes than the Low Resolution version. The Low Resolution version (on by default) has less detail, but will load much faster, especially on older machines with slower internet connections.
I will also be adding Ultra-High resolution textures to certain areas of the Earth that will be based on much more detailed elevation data. If you have any suggestions for areas that would be interesting to see in Ultra-High detail, post a comment.
The source textures consist of about 8 GB of 32-bit color GeoTIFFs and I have created them to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license. I am in the process of uploading the source textures so check back in a couple weeks. Contact Me via this form if you would like to discuss using them for commercial purposes.
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