Jack Cunniff wrote:
Did you ever wonder what an airport environment would look like before you
got there? Sure you did, it's part of preparing for a flight.

I know this sounds like spam, but I'll bet that folks are really going to
be impressed with Google's new Earth viewer, downloadable from
earth.google.com. It's like maps.google.com and draws on the same the
satellite views, but now you can also rotate and tilt the view so that you
can appear to be on final into any runway... and the terrain is accuately
modeled, too.

They still don't have high-res detail on every location, but it's
definitely worth checking out.

NOTE: this data is somewhat complex to display, and there's a caveat that
it won't work with computers more than a couple of years old.

http://www.terraserver.com has had this for several years. For a
while it was linked into MapPoint (or MapQuest?) so you could select
either a map or one of several satellite views. The problem is they
need a way to let the user specify a location by lat-long. Frequently
I pass a place of interest while hiking and memorize the position on my
GPS. At home I want to put those coords into the map/satellite program
for a look.

I found out our local fire department needs this capability, also. I
found a campfire that had not been put out very well and called the
local fire department. They wanted to know the fire location and I
said, "N42 18.123 W071 17.456". They asked what I was talking about
and then launched into a discussion about what town I was in. I agreed
to hike out to the trail head and lead them back.