Marble - Desktop Globe 0.3 ("Fjords")

[Torsten Rahn]

Name: Marble - Desktop Globe
Version: 0.3 ("Fjords")
Type: Education
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: LGPL
Homepage: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2412
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=55105

Description:
 Early beta preview of the Marble Widget
application which is targeted for KDE 4.

You need to install both packages: "marble" and
"marble-data" to run Marble.

Marble is a generic geographical map widget that
is meant to be used by KDE4 applications. It shows
the earth as a sphere but doesn't make use of any
hardware acceleration (No OpenGL). So although it
might look similar to professional applications
like Google Earth or Nasa World Wind it's rather
meant to be a small light weight multi purpose
widget. To improve speed I decided to compile the
Kubuntu packages with SSE support (-msse).

Current features include:

* Marble uses a minimal free dataset that can be
used offline. Currently the total amount of data
that is meant to be shipped is about 5 MB. 
* Marble doesn't use OpenGL or 3D hardware
acceleration. It just uses Arthur as a painting
backend. Extending it later on to support OpenGL
as well shouldn't be hard however I don't consider
that the primary focus. Depending on your hardware
and the maps being displayed framerate is
approximately 5-20 fps. 
* Marble uses vector as well as bitmap data:
Currently it uses the very old MWDB II data
combined with ETOPO 2, which I will update to
current SRTM soon. 
* Marble displays the world map as a 3D sphere,
because it's more fun to use and less subject to
distortion (So with regard to that it's just like
NASA WorldWind, Earth3D and Google Earth) 
* Marble should start up almost instantly.
Currently it "cold" starts fully within 2-5
seconds. On each subsequent start it takes about
one second.
* Uses KML-Import to display places (Google Earths
open format to store placemarks)
* Different Map Themes, Layers
* Dynamic Coordinate Grid
* Measure Tool
* Basic Wikipedia integration

The next release 0.4 ("Sladibadfast") will contain
improved Wikipedia integration and automatic
online tile download (like Nasa World Wind).