I've just found this software. I've not yet installed it but it seems very interesting!!!
Anyone that has already used it?

Look at features:

GeoVirgil is a planetary data analysis tool that:


* Combines imagery, elevation and other data sets into an integrated map view
* Automatically downloads data from NASA servers
* Supports searching based on feature name, geological type and size
* Provides easy to use image processing functions
* Draws sensor cross sections over top of imagery
* Easily handles over 100MB of imagery
* Alpha blends multiple layers
* Locally caches selected data sets
* And coming soon, generates a virtual 3D world to fly over

http://www.siliconspaceships.com/index.html

I know the guy who's developing this software, Steve McDonald; he's been working on it for, I think, at least 5 years. It began as a software tool for opening and viewing PDS formatted images and then doing some basic GIS (Geographic Information System, the wave of the future in planetary mapping right now) mapping on top of them. If you aren't familiar with GIS, basically it's a visual database that "knows" the geographic position of data, allows you to overlay many disparate geographic data sets and find relationships between them.

Since Steve started with it, GeoVirgil has grown into a much more powerful visualization tool. Steve came by The Planetary Society last February to give us a demonstration. Among other things, it can take global mars data of any type, drape it over topography, map it onto a globe, and allow you to fly around the globe. Pretty cool. That part may not be released publicly yet. It has lots and lots of other features too. Steve wanted to partner with us -- we buy a license from him, use it as a "member benefit" to help us recruit new members -- but we just couldn't make the math work out. (We are nonprofit, but what that means is that we have to break even -- anything we spend on any project, we have to make up through an appeal to our members for funds, and we just couldn't figure out whether that would work in this case.)

Anyway, Steve is still developing the software, and I'm sure he would welcome people to download it, play with it, and comment on it -- and share any suggestions anyone may have on a business model to market it. There are a lot of great ideas that he's worked into it.

Emily

I took a course at university about numeric cartography and gis. But on earth data
I'm pretty interested in planetary GIS!



I've mailed to Steve to ask about a problem with the "fill function". The dowload from pds imagery starts with "connecting" but it doesn't download anything.