The proposed R/R&D effort seeks to develop three innovations that specifically address the NASA Earth Science educational program's dissemination and use of Earth Science Enterprise data and technologies by providing a complete, highly-portable, classroom-appropriate, global 3D Earth visualization environment. The proposed effort extends NASA's Image2000 image processing platform with these innovations: 1. Efficient, large-dataset (global) data handling mechanisms 2. Availability of a highly-compressed, 30-meter global, natural color imagery dataset to be used with 90-meter elevation datasets 3. User-controlled 3D terrain rendering capabilities with satellite imagery texture mapping. The combined result will be an integrated Image2000 capability to roam and zoom the surface of the Earth with baseline, natural color global imagery and elevation datasets. Existing Image2000 functionality will continue to provide analytical tools for processing any satellite imagery texture map prior to its 3D display. The 3D display becomes an additional user view window, augmenting the existing Image2000 2D image display window. The target applications of the proposed 3D Earth visualization environment are a variety of educational settings requiring intuitive, user-friendly interaction paradigms, with particular strengths in the K-12 and standalone hands-on kiosk-type image processing venues. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS The proposed R/R&D effort will yield two primary commercial products: 1) a compact 3D global Earth visualization engine, and 2) a global, natural color Earth imagery dataset. The 3D global Earth visualization engine will have unique commercial applications because of its lightweight, platform-portable implementation, which will also be highly applicable to web-based applications. Specific commercial applications include educational multimedia, and a variety of geographic dataset navigation and display applications. Educational applications comprise those requiring a "touch-and-feel" interaction with the geophysical Earth. Geographic dataset navigation applications consist of those requiring effective perusal of large Earth science data archives, GIS database navigation to provide better citizen access to federal, state, and local government databases, property and land visualization for commercial real estate and land management agencies, and web applets for navigating 3D map and imagery datasets. Commercial applications for the 30-meter global, natural color Earth imagery include conventional media production such as television and film production, weather forecast simulation, and educational multimedia productions. New commercial uses for the global Earth imagery are anticipated for worldwide state- and county-level mapping programs, scientific visualization context imagery, flight simulation/post-accident simulation analysis, and web-based consumer map and imagery server content. NAME AND ADDRESS OF PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR (Name, Organization Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip) Gregory Baxes TerraMetrics, Inc. PO Box 270101 Littleton , CO 80127 - 0002 NAME AND ADDRESS OF OFFEROR (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip) TerraMetrics, Inc. PO Box 270101 Littleton , CO 80127 - 0002
