What is XGlobe?
XGlobe displays the earth as seen from space on your X desktop, similar to
xearth by Kirk Lauritz Johnson.
The code to calculate the sun's position was taken from this program. The image of the globe is
updated at regular intervals. XGlobe uses a world map image which is mapped to the globe.
With a good map this can look very nice (see Screenshots).
It is possible to mark locations on the globe. Unlike xearth, XGlobe works fine when using
the KDE Desktop Environment and switching between the virtual
desktops. The current version of XGLobe is 0.5.
XGlobe is free software; it is licensed under the GNU GPL.
System Requirements
XGlobe should in theory work on any Unix machine for which the Qt library is available.
It is being developed under Linux but people got it to work on Solaris and NetBSD at least. Please
tell me your experiences with running XGlobe on other platforms.
What Does It Look Like?
Download XGlobe
You need the Qt library (Version 1.4 or 2.0) from Troll Tech in
order to build XGlobe.
Get the XGlobe source distribution here: xglobe-0.5.tar.gz
This revision includes a free world map. You can use others as well, though.
If you do not need the included map, download this file instead:
xglobe-0.5-no-map.tar.gz
Changes
See the changelog.
Links to Map Images For XGLobe
Look at the README and README.maps files to see how to use these maps
with XGlobe.
Derivative Work
Jerome Dumonteil has created WMGlobe, a
Window Maker applet that displays the earth in an icon
using code from XGlobe.
Related Links
- XPlanet - a program very similar to
XGlobe, but using OpenGL (the moon position code was taken from this program)
- Xtraceroute - a graphical
traceroute application that displays the path of your internet packets on a textured globe
- Ssystem - a solar system simulator
Back to my software page
Thorsten Scheuermann
Last modified: Fri Dec 10 15:45:13 MET 1999
