NASA World Wind software

World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data to experience Earth terrain (or any planet with the data) in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there. Virtually visit anyplace in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps or along the African Sahara.

The download of this phenomenal software is free, but is quite large at around 250Mb. You will also need a fast computer with plenty of memory and compatible 3D graphics acceleration. If that wasn't enough, you must also have broadband (I would not try this with anything less than that). The software allows you to set the detail of resolution. The whole planet can bee seen with a resolution detail of 7 meters (1 pixel == 7 square meters), whereas all of the US can be seen with 1 meter resolution. Some urban areas like Washington D.C., Fort Worth, Seattle and Orlando have a (color) resolution of .25 meters! That means that you can pinpoint a person walking on a sidewalk.

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