Xplanet 0.73
03 Aug 2000

1) Where can I get a good night map?  Can you send me a copy of the
one you have?

I haven't been able to find a really good, freely available, map of
the nighttime earth anywhere.  The 8 bit digital elevation maps from
Doug Fortune's page (http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~fortuned/dew.html) work
pretty well.  The map files I have were given to me by the Living
Earth and I am not able to distribute them.  Sorry!

2) Can you get Xplanet to work on Microsoft Windows?

I don't have access to a Windows computer I can use to develop
software.  This definitely puts a cramp in my ability to innovate.
I've made an effort to make the code portable between Unix variants,
so hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to port it to Windows.

Also take a look at John Walker's Home Planet
(http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/homeplanet.html) which runs on
Windows and looks similar to Xplanet.  I haven't used it myself but it
looks nice.

3) Where can I get real time cloud images for use with Xplanet?

You can now get them at http://xplanet.sourceforge.net.  They're
created every six hours from GOES, METEOSAT, and GMS satellite
imagery.

Xplanet can also overlay cloud images from the Space Science and
Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin.
(http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/latest_moll.gif)
These images are updated every three hours.  Use the -cloud_ssec
option with these files.

Hari Nair
hari@alumni.caltech.edu
