• March 6th 2003: AC.earth 1.1 source code released
• December 22nd 2002: AC.earth 1.1 with earthquake plugin released
• November 12th 2002: AC.earth 1.0 released (more than 1,800 downloads so far)

What It Does

AC.earth (click for larger image) displays Earth as seen from Space (or flatly spread out on a table). The image is updated regularly as the globe revolves and day and night silently move over continents and oceans.

AC.earth offers a variety of configuration options so you can tweak this standard-behavior quite a bit. Like hovering over your home town, or zipping around in a satellite, or looking down from the moon, or...

AC.earth can be extended by plugins. The "Quakes" plugin has already been released (for more information, see the plugins section).

AC.earth, which is written in Java, is based on XEarth, which was written a long while ago by Kirk Johnson in C. Yes, porting the code from C (pointer arithmetic) to Java (object oriented) was... an interesting exercise. I'd like to thank Kirk for this great little program and for making the source code available to everyone. So did I. See Kirk's original license.

What It Needs

AC.earth runs on any platform (Windows, Linux, Apple, any!) because it is written in Java. Java usually will be allready installed on your system. In the case it is not (shame on the manufacturer!), the Java Run Time Environment (JRE version 1.4 or higher) can be downloaded from Sun. Just select the JRE for your operating system. It's not too big, and it's well worth the effort ;-).

What It Costs

AC.earth is freeware, so it costs nothing.

You might want to leave your email on the download page if you don't want to miss new updates and plugins. I promise your email address will NOT be used for any other purpose. In particular I will NOT give it to any third parties.

Plugins

Currently two plugins are packaged with AC.earth:

• "Markers", which displays markers on the map (you guessed it), defined by latitude, longitude, and label (feel free to define your own)
• "Quakes" displays information on the latest earthquakes (pulled live from the Internet or, when the server can't be reached, cached). The information is extracted from the NEIC (National Earthquake Information Center) pages. The plugin projects the epicenters on the Earth image. Magnitude and depth are visualized by the size and color of the marker. [Preview]

Get It!

AC.earth is available from the download page.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

None so far. You've got one? Email me!