Terrain Tools & Software Packages - Location specific

• listed separately:
  • commercial
  • non-commercial
  • government/academic
  • artificial

Slowly, a new field of software for 3D terrain visualization is appearing, sold to end-users and targeting a specific geographic area.  Since it's aiming for a more widespread and less technical audience, the marketing tends to be more flashy and include breathless hype - fantastic!, ultimate! - to get attention in the retail software channel.

New Zealand

• TUMONZ
  • "The Ultimate Map of New Zealand"
  • the company has licensed an enormous amount of street, elevation and landcover data from LINZ, and packaged it into an affordable, easy-to-use map browsing application
  • the viewer with basic data (US$67) comes on 1 CD, with extra modules for things like high-resolution imagery
  • there is a 3D View feature, which allows you to fly at a fixed elevation over a one small area at a time - the low-res texture comes directly from the 2D map

United Kingdom

• Photoscape 3D
  • "Photoscape 3D on DVD-ROM, enabling you to see your county or region in fantastic, photo realistic 3D! Soar over your own street, glide over surrounding neighbourhoods or open countryside, you’re in control!"
  • combines viewer software from McCarthy Taylor with 2m resolution aerial imagery from getmapping and 10m elevation from NextMap Britain
  • An interesting pricing approach: for the initial purchase price of £25 you get a pack of 3 DVDs containing the whole of England & Wales, with 47 regions which can be "unlocked".  One region is included with the initial purchase, additional are £12.50 each.