What's New with the USGS Global Visualization
Viewer
December 20, 2006
Version 7.6 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is release adds support for downloading MRLC 2001 TC data and
makes other improvements. The main changes include:
Made the MRLC 2001 TC data downloadable.
Added the download button to the scene list in the main window for the
datasets that can be downloaded.
Added version 5 of the MODIS data and included the MOD11B1 day/night
data in the inventory.
Enabled the scene list overlay map layer by default.
Changed the default color for the protected areas map layers to yellow.
Split the political boundaries map layer into a countries layer and an
administration layer which contains borders for both the countries and
major internal administration areas (like states).
Added the full dataset name as a tooltip on under the sensor menu.
September 27, 2006
Version 7.5 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is release adds National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) data
support and adds other features. The main changes include:
Added the NAPP dataset.
Changed the default dataset to display to Landsat TM.
Added a scene list overlay map layer to show the outline of the scenes
in the scene list in the image display area.
Added the ability to change the map layer colors.
Updated the protected areas map layers with the 2006 version of the
data.
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the wrong ASTER granule to be
displayed when it was double-clicked in the scene list.
Added an option to the file menu to allow downloading the browse and
metadata for the scenes in the scene list.
Minor updates to the FAQ, about browse, and help pages.
June 28, 2006
Version 7.4 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Java 1.4+ is now required to run GloVis. The obsolete Java 1.1 version
of the applet is no longer available.
Added support for printing the main applet window and the NDVI graph.
Added support for a change to the MRLC scene IDs.
Added a feature to optionally set all the scenes to same date
automatically.
Added support for modified Orthorectified ETM+ and pansharpened browse.
This increased the number of scenes GloVis has available.
Added NDVI data for 2005.
Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the NDVI graph data from being
displayed.
Added some FAQ questions.
May 24, 2006
Version 7.3 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The primary reason for this release is to change the ASTER inventory
to use L1A data instead of L1B data to maintain compatibility with the DAAC
ASTER inventory.
April 4, 2006
Version 7.2 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Added support for reading shapefiles into the applet as a map layer.
The attributes associated with the shapes can also be displayed.
Added the ability to display NDVI curves over the United States.
Added support for the Orthorectified MSS dataset.
Added optional tool tips to the applet.
Added an option to filter ASTER data by WRS-2 path and row.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent drawing the map layers
properly.
Fixed a bug that would cause unexpected behavior when running more than
one instance of the applet.
Removed the limit of a single Orthorectified dataset per session.
December 21, 2005
Version 7.1 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Added support for downloading a single Orthorectified dataset per
session for free.
Orthorectified dataset orders now use the Earth Explorer shopping
basket.
Added a railroads map layer.
Fixed some issues on the Apple Mac when using the Internet Explorer or
Netscape browsers. Note that IE and Netscape on a Mac do not support
recent versions of Java properly due to an Apple bug. For the best
experience on a Mac, use the Safari browser.
Fixed a User Defined Area bug.
September 28, 2005
Version 7.0 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The primary goal of this release is to upgrade the Java applet to a
more recent version of Java and to upgrade the GUI. The main changes include:
Converted the Java applet to use Java 2 and the Java Swing GUI toolkit.
This allows the GUI to be improved slightly for this release and will
allow greater improvements in the future. The Java 1.4 plug-in or
newer is now required. For a limited time, the web site will fall back
to the old Java applet to allow users time to upgrade to a newer Java
plug-in.
Added the ability to set a Point of Interest on the display.
Added a link to the source code distribution web site for users to
request forgotten login information.
Added search limit statistics to the search limits dialog.
Added a "Default Scene" option to the image display area right-click
menu to return the selected scene to the original one displayed.
Added scene quality as a factor in determining default scenes to
display.
Swapped the southwest and southeast corners in the EO-1 metadata
display so they display correctly.
Added a link to the GloVis 'Forum' on the home page.
Added a warning when the user is ordering low quality or high cloud
cover Landsat scenes.
For Landsat ETM scenes, the lowest of the two quality values are shown
to the user in the applet.
Modified the search for scene dialog box to start the search when the
enter key is pressed.
Updated the MODIS data in the inventory to be current.
June 29, 2005
Version 6.3 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Added a "Swath Mode" that allows navigating Landsat and ASTER data
by swath. This mode is enabled on the Tools menu.
Added a web forum to allow users to interact and post questions. This
is available from the GloVis applet help menu.
Modified the projection used in the southern Pacific Ocean to prevent
the scenes there from being distorted.
Modified the color of the icon used to indicate the current location in
the locator map to be more visible.
Modified the color used to highlight the selected scene to be more
visible for some of the sensors.
Added a popup message to the applet to warn users when they are using
an older version of Java. The September release of GloVis will require
modern Java support.
March 30, 2005
Version 6.2 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Added a dataset that combines the inventories of the Landsat ETM+,
Landsat ETM+ SLC-off, Landsat TM, and Landsat 4-5 MSS sensors into
a single dataset referred to as the "Landsat 4-7 Combined" dataset.
Added FGDC Metadata support to the datasets that did not already
have support for FGDC Metadata.
The Java applet is now signed to allow it to have extra privileges
that are normally denied to Java applets. When the applet loads,
the user will be presented with a security warning dialog. If the
user answers "Yes" to this dialog, the applet will be granted the
privilege to access the hard drive on the user's computer. This
privilege is used for the following features:
To allow the ordering and hidden scene lists to be saved to the
user's hard drive and loaded from the user's hard drive.
To allow downloading metadata and browse files to the user's
hard drive.
If the user answers "No" to the security warning dialog, these features
will not be available.
Note: The features that require extra privileges only work
with browsers using the Java plug-in from Sun (or the equivalent if it
is included with the browser). The features will NOT work with the
Microsoft Java implementation in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer
users will need to install the Sun Java plug-in to use the features.
For help, refer to
How do I install the Java plug-in?.
Modified the workaround for the limited URL length in Microsoft
Internet Explorer. Instead of limiting the number of scenes that can
be added to the scene list, any number of scenes can now be added.
However, if the number of scenes in the scene list create a URL that
is too long, only part of the scenes will be ordered. The order button
will need to be pressed multiple times to add all the scenes to the
shopping basket.
Other various improvements and bug fixes.
January 4, 2005
Version 6.1 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This is primarily a maintenance release. The main changes include:
Changed the US Cities map layer to be a World Cities layer.
Added support for many more MODIS Terra and Aqua datasets - both daily
datasets and composite datasets.
Added a link to the FGDC metadata from the Show Metadata screen for
the following datasets: EO-1 (ALI and Hyperion), Landsat 7 ETM+,
Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off, Landsat 4-5 TM, Landsat 4-5 MSS, and
Landsat 1-3 MSS.
The Landsat inventories are now updated several times an hour.
To refresh the applet periodically, use the "Refresh" option on the
Tools menu.
Added a feature to allow adding all scenes in a user defined area
to the shopping basket.
All support for Netscape browsers prior to Netscape 6.0 has been
dropped. Multiple funtions of the applet may not work properly with
these out-dated versions of the Netscape browser. If you are still
using a Netscape 4.x browse, please
upgrade to a
newer version.
Firefox 1.0 has been added as an officialy supported browser.
Other various improvements and bug fixes.
September 20, 2004
Version 6.0 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main focus of this release is to add support for additional
MODIS Terra and Aqua datasets, and to add support for the EO-1 ALI and Hyperion
datasets. The main changes include:
Added support for many MODIS Terra and Aqua datasets. Both daily
datasets and composite datasets (note that the final datasets will be
populated after the release).
Added support for the EO-1 ALI and Hyperion datasets.
Added the ability to hide selected scenes. Once they are hidden, they
will not be displayed to the user again.
Added the ability to create a user defined area for the ASTER and EO-1
datasets. The user defined area can apply to the prev/next scene
buttons, or be used as a search limit.
Added the ability to optionally remove the grid from the Landsat 7
SLC-off "Show Browse" web page.
July 12, 2004
Version 5.0 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main focus of this release is to add support for the MODIS Terra
and Aqua Surface Reflectance 8-day L3 Global 500 SIN Grid data datasets
(MOD09A1 and MYD09A1). The main changes include:
Added support the MOD09A1 and MYD09A1 datasets.
The highest resolution displayed for the Landsat TM and MSS datasets
has been changed from 480-meters to 240-meters. In most cases, this
is done by oversampling the original browse images, but over time the
source browse will be produced at 240-meter resolution.
Some of the metadata fields displayed for the Landsat TM and MSS
datasets have changed.
Added a map layer for Protected Areas.
For Microsoft Internet Explorer, added a limit to the number of
scenes that can be added to the scene list. This is to work around a
URL size limitation that was causing scenes to be lost when passing
them to the shopping basket.
Added a warning for Netscape 4.0 users that some shopping baskets
no longer support Netscape 4.0.
Added the ability to filter Landsat scenes using the scene quality.
Added the ability to only display the scenes in the scene list.
Added a restore button to the scene list to recover the scenes that
were in the scene list before the order button was pressed.
Added the ability to add all visible scenes to the scene list (except
for ASTER data).
Other various improvements and bug fixes.
March 31, 2004
Version 4.1 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main focus of this release was making improvements to the
Java applet functionality. The changes include:
Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off can now be ordered using GloVis.
The applet is now displayed in its own window instead of being
embedded in the browser window.
The applet window can be resized to make the area available for
displaying browse images larger. If your display is large enough,
an entire Landsat ETM+ browse image can be viewed at the 240 meter
resolution.
The applet window has a menu at the top for several options that
were previously available on the left side of the applet or in a
navigation bar in the browser. These options includes:
The sensor/dataset selection
The resolution selection
The map layer selection
The search limits (under the Tools menu)
The scene list dialog (under the Tools menu)
The viewer help page (under the Help menu)
The about browse images page (under the Help menu)
The product information page for the currently selected dataset
(under the Help menu)
The data acquisition schedule for the currently selected dataset
(under the Help menu)
The home page link (under the Help menu)
The applet window has a status bar shown at the bottom. It displays:
The currently selected sensor or dataset
The resolution being displayed
Any date limits that are currently in place
The latitude and longitude when the cursor is over the image
display area
The latitude, longitude, WRS path, and WRS row when the cursor is
over the locator map
A link to the quick start page was added to the Help menu.
A "North Arrow" map layer was added to indicate which direction is
north since the Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection used in the
viewer distorts direction.
The capability to search for a scene by a known scene ID (or granule ID
for ASTER data) was added. This is available from the "Search for
Scene..." option under the Tools menu.
The "More..." button under the scene list on the left side of the
applet was replaced with an "Order" button since the scene list is
now available from the Tools menu.
For Landsat datasets, a new option was added to the right-click menu
in the image display area to allow setting all the displayed scenes
as close as possible to the date of the scene that is clicked on
(subject to the current search limits).
January 29, 2004
Version 4.0 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main focus of this release was adding a large number of data
sets. The full list of changes includes:
The following data sets have been added:
Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off (Search only)
Landsat 4-5 MSS
Landsat 1-3 MSS
MRLC 2001 Terrain Corrected
MRLC 2001 At-Sensor Reflectance
MRLC 1992
Landsat Orthorectified ETM+
Landsat Orthorectified ETM+ Pansharpened
Landsat Orthorectified TM
The enter key will now act like the "Go" button for the path/row
and lat/long entry in the Java applet.
Some minor bugs in the Java applet have been fixed.
October 29, 2003
Version 3.3 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main improvements in this release are adding the ASTER TIR
browse as a data set, and enabling ordering of ASTER granules using a
shopping basket. The full list of changes includes:
The ASTER Level-1B TIR browse are now available for night collections.
When ordering ASTER granules, the ASTER scene list is now sent to the
newly available EDG shopping basket to make ordering granules easier.
This replaces the ordering instructions that were provided in earlier
releases.
A bug that was including too much fill in ASTER browse images has been
fixed. This bug typically impacted granules over water.
Several other minor bug fixes have been incorporated.
The source code available for download has been updated to the current
version.
August 28, 2003
Version 3.2 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. The main improvements in this release are changing the ASTER VNIR
browse from Level-2 Decorrelated stretch images to Level-1B images, and to
expand the metadata available for Landsat scenes. The full list of changes
includes:
The ASTER VNIR browse images are now Level-1B images instead of Level-2
Decorrelated stretch images. Previously, Level-1B browse were not
available.
The ASTER inventory is updated daily.
The full resolution ASTER browse images is now 90 meters. Previously,
the full resolution was 140 meters.
More Landsat TM and ETM metadata is made available to the user.
The Java applet has been modified to use separate threads for
downloading data over the internet. This means that while the
applet is downloading data (inventory contents, browse images, and map
layer data), the user can still interact with the applet. This should
make it easier to use the applet on a slow connection.
An animated indicator has been added to show when the Java applet is
downloading data over the network.
A date range can be set for the scenes a user wants to see. The range
can include a range of years and/or months. It is strongly encouraged
to use this while viewing ASTER data.
A popup menu is available by right-clicking on a scene in the image
display area (or holding down the option key and clicking on an Apple
Mac).
The scene list functionality has been improved by allowing a separate
scene list dialog box to be displayed. The dialog box shows more
information on each scene in the list and makes more functionality
available than the scene list in the main applet display. A popup
menu is available for the scene list in both the main applet and the
scene list dialog box.
Double-clicking on a scene in the scene list will display the scene
in the image display area. This feature is also available from a
button in the scene list dialog box and from an option in the popup
menu.
The scene information area has been changed to a Java component that
allows its contents to be copied to the clipboard.
Various other improvements and bug fixes have been incorporated.
The source code available for download has been updated to the current
version.
May 1, 2003
Version 3.1 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) has been
released. This release is a maintenance release to make some minor
improvements to the existing functionality. The changes include:
The ASTER inventory is current through the beginning of April, 2003.
In April, the ASTER processing flow changed to produce Level-1B browse
instead of Level-2 Decorrelated Stretch browse. GloVis will be updated
to utilize the Level-1B browse in the near future.
Several causes of synchronization problems between GloVis and
EarthExplorer have been identified and fixed. GloVis should be able to
maintain much better synchronization now. The existing GloVis Landsat
inventories are undergoing a process to fix the disagreeing scenes and
should be in complete agreement with EarthExplorer in a few weeks.
Navigation has been improved in the viewer.
Entry boxes have been added for entering a latitude and longitude
to display.
The mouse may now be used to drag the image viewing area to a
new location or to adjust the scrollbar positions. Simply press
and hold the left mouse button and move the mouse to reposition
the display. Note that this is very useful when viewing Landsat
7 ETM+ data at the 240m resolution.
When displaying the ASTER 400m resolution, the arrow buttons now
step by 1/3 of the displayed area.
When no scenes are available in the area being viewed, any map
layers available in the area are still displayed and the lat/long
is still available.
The Map Layer display has been improved significantly. The layers are
much more visible and can be distinguished easily.
A map layer was added for US Cities.
Political boundaries are now shown at all times in the locator map.
The maximum cloud cover selection has been changed from a slider bar
to a dropdown list.
The viewer design has been improved to allow easier customization.
The source code available for download has been updated to the current
version.
December 5, 2002
Version 3.0 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer has been released. This
release adds support for ASTER Level-2 Decorrelated Stretch VNIR scenes using
Level-1B metadata. The inventory of ASTER scenes is current through the end of
May 2002. Infrastructure is being put into place to keep the inventory
up-to-date on a daily basis, but it is not ready yet. Directly ordering ASTER
scenes is not yet supported. However, instructions are provided for ordering
data via the EDG. Other changes include:
Modified the home page to allow the world image to fit in a browser
window that is 800 pixels wide.
Added a latitude and longitude display on the main page.
Changed the right mouse button action to place the clicked-on scene
behind the other visible scenes. Alternately, holding down the Alt,
Shift, or Ctrl key and pressing the left mouse button will perform the
same action.
Made the source code used to build the web site available for download
for organizations wishing to create similar web sites. Note: The
source code is provided "As-Is" with no support.
August 23, 2002
Version 2.2 of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer has been released. This
release is a maintenance release to make some minor improvements to the existing
functionality. The changes include:
Allow users to login to Earth Explorer when placing orders by using
a new feature of Earth Explorer. This will allow users to use
existing Earth Explorer accounts and order restricted products if they
are approved for them.
Added a Quick Start Tutorial.
Reduced the network bandwidth used in many cases. This should make
response times better for users on slower connections under many
conditions.
Compressed the map layer files to decrease download times.
Identified and worked around an issue with Netscape Java support that
could result in the browser eventually running out of memory with
extended use.
April 29, 2002
The current version of the USGS Global Visualization Viewer has incorporated
a number of improvements to the site's navigation and displays, data and
metadata access, and overall usability. Specific changes for Release 2.1
include:
General
Changed the background image for the locator map
Improved the overall "look and feel" of the web pages
Improved and reorganized the Help and About Browse
documentation
Navigation and Displays
Added the capability to search a different sensor from the viewer
applet
Added a border to highlight the currently selected scene
Added a "custom mosaic" capability that retains recently selected
scene(s) when navigating
Improved date navigation by allowing a user-selected month and year
