Guide to 1.3.3

The Guide to NASA World Wind 1.3.3 is designed to give you an overview of what's new. Please take the time to familiarize youself with the content here prior to visiting the forums or chat.

Installation notes
'''World Wind 1.3.3 comes as a full installation only at this point. This is not an upgrade edition at the moment. Upgrades are not currently supported for this version.' Note: If you try to use this to upgrade, it is possible that it will work, but we cannot provide support in the very likely event that something goes wrong. If you decide to go ahead and upgrade in spite of this warning, you are strongly encouraged to back up EVERYTHING you may want to keep!!!''

If you have any previous installation of World Wind on your computer, or have had one in the past, Please do not install 1.3.3 UNTIL you have done the following:
 * 1) Uninstall all previous versions of World Wind, or at the very least backup all important data!!! We have received complaints of WW overwriting custom settings/cache, etc. While many Windows applications allow you to keep personalization across multiple versions, you should ALWAYS back up data!!! We cannot be responsible if you neglect this fundamental practice of basic computer usage. Even with XP, it is a good habit to reboot your system after install/uninstall of software, as well.
 * 2) Delete previous user settings in $WinDrive$:\\Documents and Settings\$username$\Application Data\NASA I personally delete the entire folder. If you fail to do this, and World Wind has a problem, shut WW down, delete that folder, and restart application.

New features in WorldWind 1.3.3

 * Blue Marble Next Generation (500 meters per pixel) - Go to Plugins-->Blue Marble to activate
 * The Moon plus terrain (4 image sets) Go to File-->Moon. Make sure to play with Vertical Exaggeration
 * 3 new Landsat mosaics (NLT Pseudo, Geocover 1990, Geocover 2000) - Shows off/accentuates new earth features - Pick in Layer Manager
 * ESRI shapefile support
 * New terrain engine
 * NRL Real-Time Weather
 * Multi-layer Transparency - Right click on layer in Layer Manager, choose Properties
 * Option to display tile names with info on location in Cache

Known issues
This is a list of current issues you may encounter with World Wind 1.3.3. This does not include minor bugs. See World Wind Issues for a comprehensive list of issues.

Black Screen Syndrome
There is a bug in World Wind 1.3.3 where, on inital startup, Earth may not show for an extended perion of time. This has been fixed in World Wind 1.3.3.1.

Important Links
Please also see these links for important information regarding this release and general WorldWind topics!


 * Release Notes
 * WorldWind FAQ at WorldWind Central
 * WorldWind Tutorial
 * | WorldWind FAQ at NASA WorldWind Forums

Where (and How) to get Help on 1.3.3
Please be aware that we are often swamped with users asking the same questions that we go over time and time again – while this may seem strange, the vast majority of issues and complaints that we get are already explained very clearly in the the FAQ.

Knowledge Base
You can start at the frequently asked questions or the main page.

User Forums
World Wind forums are an important component of the support structure for WorldWind. Following a careful reading of the FAQ, users should visit the forums and prepare to do some reading. This is the best way to discuss World Wind with other users.

Chat
World Wind Chat allows you to chat live with other users. Before joining the chat you should make sure that your questions aren't already covered in the FAQ.

Please come visit, but be aware that there is often a lot going on, and this is not generally the appropriate place to receive basic user support. For best results make sure you follow the chat guidelines.