I was watching a news show one day and they had a view of a
spinning globe. Each continent seemed to be created out of
a mesh of some kind. Where oceans normally, would be, you
could see through to the other side of globe. Each continent
was its own object. In other words, they weren't using an
image-mapped sphere. I've done image-mapped spheres.

What I want is vector data that I can use to recreate the same
effect. With vector data, I can write a short program to create
my own smooth meshes of the continents.

I went searching on the internet and found references to the
Digital Chart of the World (DCW) which has been renamed to
VMAP Level 0. However, the online sources for this data make
it such a pain to download it piece by piece. Not to mention it
is HUGE! About 87 megabytes it seems. This is definately
overkill for what I want to do. I know it is available on CD's, but
for now I am looking for a free source of the data if it exists.

Is there anything else available some poor soul can use to
just get an OUTLINE of the major land masses in a vector
format? Lat/Long coords would be preferrable, but I'll take
almost anything I can convert.

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