Download ISRO Bhuvan, an Indian challenge to Google Earth | Milloz

Bhuvan, (भुवन: is a word in Sanskrit meaning Earth, does it point some thing) is a satellite mapping tool similar to Google Earth and Wikimapia. It is developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) an important figure in World space market with several successful satellit missions including recent successful satellite launch to Moon named mission Chandrayan means mission to mooon.

more info about isro's useful software (isrobhuvan) follows.

Bhuvan has better resolution up to 5 metres while google Earth features only up to 200 meters and is considered as a rival to Google Earth and Wikimapia. ISRO's satellites are more concentrated in Indian continent and atleast in this area it will be stiff competition for Google Earth. Apart from this since ISRO is an india government agency, Bhuvan can offer a host of India specific attractions like weather info, Governmental boundaries of every states & districts, population and other sensus, area measurement, distance calculation, administrative details etc.

From wikipedia article about Bhuvan:
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ISRO launched the beta version of its web-based 3-D satellite imagery tool, Bhuvan, on August 12, 2009. Bhuvan will offer superior imagery of Indian locations compared to other Virtual Globe software with spatial resolutions ranging from 6 m to 55 m. Locations can be viewed from different perspectives and will allow for the measurement of distances. The Bhuvan portal is designed to run on slow Internet connections. The imagery would steer clear of all sensitive military installations in India for security concerns.

Bhuvan displays better images of India than the ones relayed by Google Earth along with a number of other interesting features which include weather information and even administrative boundaries of all states and districts, relevant only to the country. ISRO Bhuvan is equally capable of offering images of the globe, but the best resolution area includes India at the moment. In the Indian subcontinent, Bhuvan will be able to display a picture from ten meters away that is; a commuter moving on the road can be easily spotted.

National Remote Sensing Agency played an important role in the creation of this product. ISRO has used data provided by satellites including Resourcesat-1, Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2 to get the best possible imagery for India. ISRO claims that the application can provide imagery of up to 10 metres for major Indian cities compared to 200 meters provided by Google Earth.

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Bhuvan needs special plugin to work with browser, which can be downloaded from
1)download here(recommended plugin) .
2)download here .

Apart from this registration is needed at official web site of bhuvan isro here, also view and kick start bhuvan from isro bhuvan home web page here.

Features

* Bhuvan allows users to access, explore and visualize 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on soil, wasteland, water resources etc in the Indian subcontinent.
* It displays multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data.
* Users can superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required.
* It allows visualization of AWS(Automatic Weather Stations) data in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice .
* Fly to locations (Enables users to fly from the current location directly to the selected location)
* It features a Heads-Up Display(HUD) navigation controls (Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)
* Allows navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)
* 3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard)
* Drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse)
* Drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes)
* Snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)
* Measurement tools (Horizontal distance, aerial distance, vertical distance, measure area)
* Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)

Hardware and software Requirements for Bhuvan

* Operating System: Windows XP/Vista
* CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
* System Memory (RAM): 512MB
* Hard Disk: 2GB free space
* Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
* Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
* Screen: 1280x1024, 32-bit True Color

Yesterday I took a preview of Bhuvan isro and found to have faster loading time compared to Google Earth, administrative locations including villages, districts were visible as layers with sensus data, other local statistics were visible, but at closer zoom the images were not clear. May be it is because the service is over crowded. Any way it is for sure ISRO can fulfill their expections with having a bunch of high quality satellites in hand.

One thing is for sure, Bhuvan isro will force other mapping services to improve their quality of services, which will be good for all. What do you think about it, please comment.