Description | Images | Download | Sources


Earth Mk.I


Description

Earth Mk.I is an experiment with texture mapping in Java3D, which (hopefully) works out fairly well (given that it only took 2 hours to code).

A texture mapped sphere represents the Earth, surrounded by a bluish transparent sphere to represent the atmosphere.
I got bored playing with that, so I added the moon, and a yellowish directional light source to represent the sun.

I have another version of this program kicking around somewhere which includes stars, a visible sun, and better lightsources.



Images

Here's a couple of screenshots of the program in action.




Fig. 1 - Moonrise over Africa and Europe, from near-Earth orbit (atmosphere is visible).




Fig. 2 - Closer view of the Moon, with Earth in the background (American continent).




Download

You can download the compiled class files (including necessary textures):

It is assumed that Java3D is already installed on your system.

Manoever with the cursor keys, with Shift, Alt, Ctrl modifiers.





Sources and Inspiration

Tor Oera's fantastic site - http://www.oera.net and Tor's 3D Earth tutorial

Fourmilab's Earth View - http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/

NASA's Earth from Space site - http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/

top

16th August 2001