Slashgeo

Ben Discoe writes "For those people who haven't checked out the VTP software in a while, we've been steadily releasing enhancements every 1-2 months for the past 6 years. In the latest release, there is: Improved road geometry, expanded format support, texture switching at runtime, improved dynamic overview, texturing for TINs, LineWidth for Abstract layers, improved WMS support, and more. As always, it's open source and cross-platform; in fact, it's recently become far more stable and usable on Linux and Mac OS X in addition to Windows."

Vector One reviews Terragen, a phtorealistic scenery rendering tool (free for non-commercial use). From the short review: "It should be noted that this program exports the terrain generated and it does so well, including 3ds and dxf formats among others, which will place anything you create in the program directly into most GIS and a short hop, then, to any Geographic Explorer System (GES) - working both GIS and CAD environments." I tried Terragen a long time ago and was impressed by the ease of use and rendering quality. See also Virtual Terrain Project's list of similar software.

Microsoft's Photosynth, previously on Slashgeo, is now available as a technology preview. From Very Spatial: "The Photosynth demos show you the point cloud that was generated for each photo collection, and then you can navigate around and see each photo in its referenced location and look at the 3D rendering of the photos. Even though it’s not even a beta yet, I just think it’s cool. Many, many possibilities come to mind again, of course, by linking Photosynth to a virtual globe, such as, let’s say, Virtual Earth 3D…" Spatially Adjusted offers screenshots.

Ogle Earth has three entries on the launch of Google SketchUp 6, including Pro and Free versions. Amongst the new features, from the blog: "Photo Match: "Photo Match allows you to designate lines in a photograph that correspond to the axes in Google SketchUp. Then SketchUp calculates the camera position and field of view to equate the modeling environment to the photograph." Well, WOW. Just in time to populate that 3D Warehouse default layer in Google Earth. 3D Text: "Converts text to 2D outlines, filled surfaces, or extruded 3D objects. It’s easy to create signs and letters directly in SketchUp..." All you need now is to find out what typeface the Hollywood sign is in:-)" Here's the AECNews article about it.

Your Picasa photo albums exported to KML in Google Earth? Consider this done. From the Ogle Earth blog, in addition to Picasa web albums (CNET and Google Blogoscoped), geotagged photos will be exported directly in Google Earth. From the blog: "We'll have to await a formal announcement to see wether this also heralds server-hosted My Places for Google Earth, in addition to Picasa photos. It would certainly be in keeping with the direction Google has been heading in for its most recent launches." Also, from a GB comment: "you can Geotag your pictures in Google Earth, automatically creating a KML file with no need to know programming. I could see people sharing picture tours using [Picasa] and KML, and sharing the link via Google Maps." Here's the official announcement (web sharing).

CNET News reports "NASA and Microsoft have teamed up to give people a 3D photographic look at the space shuttle Endeavour before its launch this week, in a public-private partnership that could lead to more use of digital imagery in future space-agency missions.

Microsoft on Monday will release a downloadable viewer that includes hundreds of photos of the space shuttle, NASA's vehicle assembly building and the shuttle's launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Endeavour is scheduled for flight Wednesday.)"