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March/April 2002 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Walrus À la carte Mosaic Reverberations

Go virtually anywhere
By Steven Fick and Mary Vincent

Armchair exploring is about to get a lot more interesting. A Canadian company is creating an interactive three-dimensional map of the world that will allow anyone with a personal computer to "fly" to any destination in seconds. Virtual travellers can then zoom in to check out a specific feature — say, Howe Sound (bottom, left), an inlet of the Strait of Georgia northwest of Vancouver.

WorldSat International is producing its mosaic of the Earth’s surface with a resolution of 30 metres using sophisticated software programs that first digitize detailed topographic maps and then drape satellite imagery over the elevation models.

While these perspective views are map-accurate, artistic licence is employed in assigning colours to the patchwork of images — often taken in different seasons — to give them, typically, an aesthetically pleasing summer look. The company realizes, says Emery Miller, WorldSat’s vice-president of business development, that people "like to swim and sail in a blue lake, not a black one."

An enhanced image of the Pacific Northwest as it appears from space stretches from Lesser Slave Lake in north-central Alberta to Olympia, Washington (lower right), and across the Rocky Mountains to the Prairies. With the click of a mouse, the computer program zeroes in on Vancouver, then heads up Howe Sound (bottom, middle and right) in the Coast Mountains.

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