Put a dynamic representation of the globe on your desktop with Desktop Earth
Description: Desktop Earth is an interactive wallpaper generator that presents an accurate, constantly changing representation of the earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment on your desktop wallpaper.
Not all Wallpaper images are created equal, but this one has to be one of the coolest. Desktop Earth presents a changing image of the globe and displays shadows on lights based on the current time. It also retrieves a semi-realtime cloud image from the Internet in order to generate an accurate depiction of what the earth would look like at the very moment you are looking at it (more or less) if you were looking at it from space. More notes on this:
- Imagery: the globe used in Desktop Earth uses imagery based on NASA’s Blue Marble: Next Generation and Earth’s City Lights. Images are created from high-resolution textures (2560×1280) and should work well on any display.
- Time zone: the time zone (and therefore the progression of shadows and lights) can be set to update every 1, 5, 15 or 60 minutes.
- Clouds: Desktop Earth can update its cloud representations from the internet every 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours, depending on what you choose in the settings. These clouds are generated for the Xplanet project and are actually image mosaics generated from weather satellite images (therefore not 100% accurate, but close). You can control the degree of desired cloud cover thickness in the settings.
- Night view: can be generated in 5 different ways (city lights, abundant city lights, moonlit surface, simple shadows, or no night imager). All of these look fantastic, but my favorite is abundant city lights (with moonlit surface coming at a very close second).
- Different months: the program uses a different image of the globe for each different month, in order to accurately simulate snow and foliage changes. (This is the kind of attention to detail that just blows me away).
- Display options: the program will stretch the image across your screen, but you might need to select “crop if needed” from the settings to get that to work optimally. It can alternately fit the image to your screen and overlay black bars on top and bottom to create a “widescreen” visual style. Desktop Earth should work well in multi monitor environments, and should adapt to changing your desktop’s size or shape.
- Active desktop: you can use Desktop Earth in active desktop mode, which allows you to resize the picture in the background at will, and might be useful in a multi monitor system. I’m not a big fan of this, personally.
- Just the wallpaper, please: if you prefer to simply have a static, non changing JPEG image to use as wallpaper without installing this software, there is a Desktop Earth Online wallpaper generator that will simply generate an image for you to use based on user-defined settings.
Wish list:
- One thing: I wish it were possible to hide the system tray icon so that its now always showing.
The verdict: simply wonderful. Your co-workers or remark on what a lovely wallpaper you have and ask where you got it. Spread the word.
Version Tested: 2.1
Compatibility: WinAll.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 6 megs).
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This looks pretty cool. Runs well on Vista the only thing is Active desktop won’t work on windows x64, and I was able to hide the icon and have it always hidden.
weather watcher (http://www.singerscreations.com/) has similar capabilities, with the added bonus of fetching a full weather forecast
Samer-
I don’t know about in Vista, I assume it’s the same, but in windows XP you can customize which icons show and which icons don’t. If you right click on the desktop toolbar>properties>customize then it will show you a list of your current and previous system tray icons and let you change whether they “Always show” “Always hide” or “Hide when inactive”. Cheers.
thats pretty cool, just wondering how much resources it eats up though.
Weather Watcher doesn’t provide the same resolution as this. It is my favorite weather program, though, by far.
[...] a Desktop Earth, via Freewaregenius. Qui invece per generare immagini statiche della [...]
[...] Sólo el fondo de pantalla: si simplemente quieres tener una y no el cambio de imágenes JPEG para utilizar como fondo de pantalla y sin necesidad de instalar este programa, hay un apartado en su Web Desktop Earth Online que simplemente generar una imagen para que se pueda usar basada en una configuración definida. Vía: freewaregenius.com [...]
take a look at xplanet, with the option to view earth, sun, mars, …
http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/
thanks you a lot
[...] or remark on what a lovely wallpaper you have and ask where you got it. Spread the word. Put a dynamic representation of the globe on your desktop with Desktop Earth Review & Download L… __________________ [...]
You can hide the tray icon by customizing the tray settings. Right-click on your taskbar and choose Properties. There’s a checkbox for Hide Inactive Icons, and make sure it’s checked. Then, click the Customize button. You can now choose which icons to Always Hide. Set this one to Always Hide, and OK your way out. It’s hidden!