Bhuvan : Indian Earth mapping service to beat Google Earth

May be you think above title is some what exaggerated, but I can say that now Google got a tough competitor, that too from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which unveiled its beta version of Bhuvan.

‘Bhuvan’, which means earth in Sanskrit, a satellite mapping tool based on the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) technology is similar to Google Earth and Wikimapia.

‘Bhuvan’ a web-based tool which is currently in beta stage,promises to give better 3-D satellite imagery of India than Google Earth along with other India-specific features like weather information and even administrative boundaries of all states and districts.

Bhuvan Features

• Visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.
• Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)
• Heads-Up Display ( HUD) naviation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)
• Navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)
• 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)

Key Differences between Google earth and Bhuvan:

Bhuvan:

Zoom levels up to 10 mt

Multi-layer information

Images upgraded every year

Options of viewing on different dates

Uses Indian satellites

Google Earth

Zoom levels up to 200 mt

Single layer information

Images upgraded every 4 years

No alternate viewing options

Google buys high-resolution imagery from service providers such as GeoEye

Yes we are proud of India and ISRO for providing a Home made satellite mapping tool,whose main focus only on the Indian sub-continent. But ISRO members deny any sort of a competition intent with Google Earth.

But here are some Con’s :

Bhuvan runs good in IE 6+: what about firefox or other Browsers ?

Site took 1.5 minutes to load

site is Frequently displaying “Site heavily loaded with users ” message

Bhuvan does not allows users to host content

Flash based website

yeah i know ISRO is not cutting edge expert in PC technology like Google,but while building important project they should adhere latest technology, I’m not criticizing the project this is just a suggestion.

How to get  Bhuvan ?

• First register an account from here http://bit.ly/T0MEC
• Then Download the Bhuvan plugin  http://bit.ly/1aiyS0, works only in IE
• Also Download latest DirectX  http://bit.ly/CUCYX

Link: http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/
[ad#ads-inner]

source