Even when you do come across images that are suitable for mapping onto a
sphere, they're usually preprocessed to show shadows, rather than as an
actual heightfield. You can see how the shadows in the upper right of the
earth are very pronounced, where the lighting should in fact be pretty flat.
It still gives a good illusion of reality, but it's even better when we
POV'ers can get our hands on the real raw data and not preprocessed images.
That's why I thought Jon Berndt's find was so cool - the lights at night
render well without artificial shadows. I only wish I could find the TIFF
version without the JPEG artifacts :(

"Matt Giwer" <jul### [at] ijnet> wrote in message
news:3A25A1D7.C20D63C3@ij.net...
> Dave Cook wrote:
> >
> > I enjoyed Jon Berndt's recent posting of the mosic of the earth at night
> > wrapped around a sphere, so I went off to see what else is new NASA and
> > GSFC. I stumbled across this image and, when I took a look a the 3Kx3K
TIFF
> > version, I realized it might benefit a number of people who have been
trying
> > to do accurate earth renderings. In particular, the atmospheric effects
at
> > the edges of the earth are rather nicely done. This image is, as the
> > accompanying text on the Web site
> > http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/bluemarble/index.html explains, a
compilation
> > of satellite imagery and data. The large TIFF version is about 13Mb, but
the
> > details are astounding.
>
> Yes but they don't give the raw image. Those bastards! Hope their name
> is Kenny.

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