[general]
name=PlanetX
qgisMinimumVersion=3.36
qgisMaximumVersion=4.99
description=3D globe for QGIS: satellite imagery, terrain, atmosphere, borders, roads and labels, project layers on the globe, My Places, ruler, map synchronization, place search and grab-the-Earth navigation
version=0.77.0
author=ООО «Информ++»
email=xbbster@gmail.com
about=A 3D globe in its own window inside QGIS. The whole Earth is shown
      from space down to single streets, with terrain relief and hill
      shading, a glowing atmosphere around the planet and sky at the
      horizon. Esri World Imagery opens by default as an example base map.
      It can be switched to OpenStreetMap or any XYZ Tiles connection set
      up in QGIS.
      The Layers panel adds borders, place names,
      water names, roads with their numbers, railways, airports, rivers,
      lakes, peaks and protected areas from OpenFreeMap vector tiles,
      a coordinate grid, stars with the Milky Way, clouds and land and
      sea temperature from NASA GIBS. 3D buildings from
      OpenStreetMap rise from the ground near the camera.
      The ruler measures ground length and heading, the elevation
      profile of a path shows ascent and slopes. Coordinates show
      in degrees, degrees-minutes-seconds, UTM or MGRS. Places
      have icons and a time of their own with a time slider,
      and a tour can be recorded from the screen.
      The Sun row
      lights terrain and buildings by the position of the sun with
      a dark night side, the 3D path and 3D polygon of the ruler
      measure over roofs and walls of buildings.
      The Body icon puts the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, the
      Galilean moons, seven moons of Saturn, Ceres or Vesta in place of
      the Earth, with global NASA and USGS imagery and terrain of Mars
      and the Moon from MOLA and LOLA heights, and opens the starry sky seen from the
      centre of the celestial sphere: the Milky Way, stars,
      constellation lines and names, the Sun, the Moon and the planets
      at the chosen time. The Demo icon with an academic cap opens
      prepared scenes: Perm, Boca Chica and the Japan Trench with a
      section across the subduction zone on the Earth, landing sites
      on Mars and the Moon, Jezero crater on Mars, constellations and bright objects in the
      sky.
      Labels stay upright, do not overlap and hide behind mountains and
      the horizon. The label language follows QGIS or is chosen from
      15 languages and local names.
      Layers of the current project, vector and raster, lie on the globe
      in the map order of QGIS, labels of vector layers stay level like
      city names.
      Drag the Earth with the left mouse
      button, it keeps rotating by inertia after release. The wheel zooms
      to the point under the cursor, the middle button or Shift with the
      left button turns and tilts the view. A double click zooms to a
      point, the right button zooms, Ctrl looks around, arrows, PageUp,
      PageDown, N, U and R move the view. The compass ring,
      look and move sticks and the height slider stay in the corner of
      the view as a faint outline. The globe follows the QGIS map window or leads it, in any
      map coordinate system. A click in the Identify mode lists the
      features of the project layers under the point and selects them on
      the map, selection on the map shows on the globe.
      My Places keep placemarks, paths, polygons and
      measurements in a shared file of the QGIS profile. They are drawn
      by clicks on the globe. The ruler measures lines, paths,
      polygons and circles on the WGS84 ellipsoid. Save view puts a
      placemark that restores the height, heading and tilt. Tours fly
      over My Places and along paths. A snapshot of the view goes to a
      file or into a QGIS layout. KML and KMZ open into My Places and a
      folder saves back to KML. Places rise above the ground and extend
      to it as walls and blocks. Point layers with a time field show as
      growing tracks along the QGIS Temporal Controller. A scene saves
      the whole view to a file, a tour records to PNG frames.
      Type a place name or coordinates in the Search field and the
      camera flies there smoothly, the place found gets a red pin.
      A PDF manual with pictures in Russian and English opens from the
      About window.
      Requires OpenGL 3.3 and PyOpenGL, which ships with QGIS on Windows.
      Tested on QGIS 3.36 (Qt 5) and 4.0 (Qt 6).
      Imagery: Esri, Vantor, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User
      Community. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, vector tiles
      OpenFreeMap. Terrain: Mapzen Terrain Tiles (SRTM, GMTED, ETOPO1
      and other sources). Clouds: NASA GIBS, VIIRS. Stars: Yale Bright
      Star Catalogue. Milky Way: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
      Scientific Visualization Studio, Gaia DR2: ESA/Gaia/DPAC.
      Mars: NASA, USGS, Viking MDIM2.1. Moon: USGS, LRO LOLA. Tiles of
      both: OpenPlanetaryMap. Mars heights: NASA MGS MOLA MEGDR. Moon
      heights: NASA LRO LOLA GDR. Other bodies: global mosaics of USGS
      Astrogeology and NASA Photojournal from MESSENGER, Magellan,
      Galileo, Voyager, Cassini and Dawn data. Constellations and star names:
      d3-celestial, © Olaf Frohn. Planets: JPL orbital elements.
      Landsat 1-5 MSS images were added after a discussion with Nadezhda
      (https://github.com/nadiopt-cell), the author of QGIS plugins for
      loading satellite images.
      Developed with the support of Inform++ LLC (www.informpp.ru).
tracker=https://github.com/Valery35/planetx/issues
repository=https://github.com/Valery35/planetx
homepage=https://www.informpp.ru/главная-страница/qgis-planetx
tags=3d,globe,earth,mars,moon,mercury,venus,jupiter,europa,titan,sky,stars,constellations,planets,openstreetmap,osm,terrain,dem,satellite,imagery,atmosphere,navigation,labels,vector tiles,opengl
category=Web
icon=icon.png
experimental=False
deprecated=False
changelog=0.77.0 The images window gives a whole scene - the Whole scene,
      source files item of the method list at the bottom of the window. All
      bands, the cloud mask and the metadata are downloaded as they are to a
      scene folder, a layer set of all bands goes to the project. The method
      exists for Sentinel-2, Landsat, MSS, ASTER and MODIS, clipping to the
      area stays the default. If the area lies beyond the edge of the scene
      image, the window no longer adds empty layers and says that the bands
      hold no data. This happened with ASTER from NASA, whose catalogue
      knows only the scene frame.
      0.76.0 The ASTER images here… item of the globe menu opens the
      images window right on ASTER. The Search line finds the same action by
      the words ASTER, minerals, kaolinite. The manual tells step by step
      how to get a free NASA Earthdata key and enter it in the images
      window.
      0.75.0 ASTER images after 2006 from the NASA archive - the ASTER
      since 2007 line of the images window. Search and preview go without
      sign-in, the files by a free NASA Earthdata key, the window asks for
      it once. After 2008 ASTER has only the visible, near infrared and
      thermal bands.
      0.74.0 ASTER images of 2000-2006 in the images window - 14 bands,
      visible and near infrared at 15 m, shortwave infrared at 30 m, thermal
      at 90 m, without sign-in or key. ASTER mineral indices for ore
      exploration - kaolinite and alunite, sericite and muscovite,
      carbonates, iron oxides, quartz. The layers are coloured over the
      area, warm colours mean more of the mineral.
      0.73.0 The All scene bands line of the images window puts into the
      QGIS project one file with all bands of the image in the order of
      their numbers. Sentinel-2 gives 12 bands at 10 m, Landsat 8-9 gives 8,
      Landsat 4-7 gives 7, the thermal band is in kelvins. The bands are
      named, the layer shows natural colours, another combination is chosen
      in the layer properties.
      0.72.0 Early Landsat images of 1972-1993. The Early Landsat images
      1972-1993 here… item of the globe menu opens the images window on the
      MSS scanner images of Landsat 1-5, 60 m per pixel. The Search line
      finds the same action by the words MSS, early images, old images. Near
      Perm there are 778 such scenes. Layers for the QGIS project - false
      colours, all four MSS bands in one file, NDVI and NDWI from top of
      atmosphere reflectance. Slanted stripes of failed lines on MSS images
      are replaced with neighbouring pixels, clouds and snow stay as they
      are. MSS images were added after a discussion with Nadezhda
      (github.com/nadiopt-cell), the author of QGIS plugins for loading
      satellite images.
      0.71.0 Share View… in the Scene icon menu writes an HTML page
      with the globe. It opens in a browser without QGIS and shows the
      camera of the view, terrain, the OpenStreetMap base, the selected
      placemarks and a tour. The assistant turns on catalogue layers and
      maps, opens windows and tools, demos and bodies and changes the
      opacity of a shown layer.
      0.70.0 The Aurora map in the Weather group of the catalogue
      shows the probability of a visible aurora by the NOAA forecast for
      the next half hour to an hour and a half. Slope and contours are
      drawn only on the near terrain, no farther than three distances from
      the camera to the look-at point. A view tilted to the horizon no
      longer stalls on computing hundreds of far tiles.
      0.69.2 A project layer in the Layers list no longer shows a relief
      or grid role, the row holds the layer name and type.
      0.69.1 The manual figures are taken again with the new Layers
      section. The manual has new pictures of the Add data catalogue and of
      the currents over the Atlantic. The description of the currents in the
      catalogue tells about white streaks over the speed colouring. In the
      English interface the precipitation map is called Precipitation, not
      Sediments.
      0.69.0 The Layers section shows in one list everything on the
      globe. A row takes one line, the ⋯ menu on the right changes the
      opacity, saves what is in view to the QGIS project and removes the
      layer. Project layers are the QGIS project group of the same list.
      Base map and Relief stand at the top of the list. A click on them
      opens the choice of the base map, land heights (Terrarium, Copernicus
      DEM 30 m, GEDTM30) and sea depths. The Add data button puts the
      catalogue of maps and layers in place of the list - categories on the
      left, a check box and a source in a row, the description of the chosen
      one under the list. The globe stays visible. The catalogue has a new
      Energy category - power plants, power lines, pipelines and submarine
      cables. Currents are white streaks over a speed colouring. From afar
      the Gulf Stream and other strong currents stand out, the streaks do
      not loop through the eddies. A double click on an empty project layer
      in QGIS 3.36 no longer gives an error in every frame.
      0.68.1 The first hint of getting to know the plugin says that
      the Earth turns after the cursor while the left button is pressed.
      Sets for a task and the Set row of the Layers section are removed.
      0.68.0 The Search field also finds features of the plugin -
      layers, maps, windows, tools, demos and bodies. Type “currents”,
      “ruler” or “images” and choose a suggestion. Ctrl+K from anywhere in
      the window puts the cursor into the field. Sets for a task - the Set
      row of the Layers section. Geologist, Miner, Hydrologist, Historian,
      Developer and Clean globe turn on their layers in one choice. Getting
      to know the plugin - five hints over the window on the first opening.
      It is repeated from the Search field. The properties of a placemark,
      folder, image, bathymetry and extrusion open in the panel to the right
      of the view instead of separate windows. The globe stays usable under
      them. Contours on Mars, the Moon and other bodies are thin and smooth
      up close, lines below zero on bodies without a sea have the land
      colour. A weather map after a historical map on the time slider no
      longer gives a Python error.
      0.67.1 Old maps are called historical maps throughout the plugin
      and the manual. Rumsey maps - the Whole catalogue check box finds a
      map by year or title among all 56 thousand maps. Frames of the listed
      maps are shown on the globe, the Show on the globe button flies to the
      chosen one. Ocean currents follow the time slider - its handle sets
      the day from February 2017 on. Wind and current streaks are thicker
      and easier to see. The To QGIS project… item is available for
      colourings too. Weather and currents go as a raster of values with a
      legend, NASA themes, clouds and temperature as an image of the same
      date. A layer of the On the globe section stays as a row after its
      check box is cleared and comes back with the same check box. The
      Remove from the globe item removes the row. Legends of power plants,
      power lines and currents stand in the common legend panel at the
      bottom left and do not cover the icon bar. Imagery of bodies,
      palaeogeography and the relief of Mars and the Moon load from a backup
      server when the main one does not answer.
      0.67.0 Historical maps of the David Rumsey collection - the Rumsey
      historical maps here… item of the globe menu lists the maps at the
      view by year. The chosen map is built, georeferenced and put into the
      project with its year, then the time slider and the swipe of two years
      work. The collection images are for non-commercial use only. Wind
      streaks - white running trails over the Wind map. Ocean currents - the
      Currents row of the Planet of water gallery group, streaks coloured by
      speed from NOAA data. The On the globe section of Layers - layers that
      are on, with an opacity slider and a menu. The To QGIS project… item
      saves what is in view as a GeoPackage layer. Submarine cables -
      communication lines and power cables from OpenStreetMap, a row of the
      Map group. OpenStreetMap power lines, cables and pipelines - a row of
      the Map group, the line colour is the voltage or the substance. Power
      plants of the world - about 35 thousand plants of the WRI database,
      the colour is the fuel, the size is the capacity. Mining areas -
      outlines of open pits and dumps of the world, OpenStreetMap mines and
      quarries at the view. Mineral deposits - world mines and plants added,
      a click on a point opens the details without the identify mode, major
      deposits stand out more. Contours moved to the Map group of the Layers
      section. OpenStreetMap, weather and slab data loading switches to a
      backup server by itself when the main one does not answer.
      0.66.1 The elevation profile across an own water body shows the
      water above the bed and a dashed line of the water body level with a
      label.
      0.66.0 Historical maps with a year - a raster or XYZ tiles of the project
      (the Map year… item of the layer menu) and a ground image (the Time
      field). Maps of one group replace each other on the time slider, the
      last map not later than the moment is shown, the ◂ ▸ steps go by the
      map years, the ⇆ button opens the swipe of two years. The Moscow, old
      maps demo has maps of 1813, 1860, 1900, 1917 and 1935 from Wikimedia
      Commons. Bathymetry from echo sounder soundings - the Bathymetry from
      soundings… item of the point layer menu builds a raster from the
      depths and puts it into the globe terrain as the water body bed with
      water above it. Cut and fill - the Cut and fill… item of the raster
      menu compares a new terrain survey with an earlier one, shows the cut
      and fill volumes and areas and puts a difference raster into the
      project. QGIS 3.36 no longer hangs on XYZ tile layers of the project.
      The requests of the plugin go their own way and do not hold up the
      requests of QGIS.
      0.65.0 The Mineral deposits row of the Maps and layers gallery
      shows about 300 thousand mineral deposits, mines and occurrences of
      USGS and 3 thousand major deposits of the world. The colour is the
      commodity group, a click shows the name, commodities, type and a link
      to the USGS record. Own bathymetry - the Water body bathymetry… item
      of the raster menu puts a raster of depths or bed elevations into the
      globe terrain, semi-transparent water is drawn above it at the water
      body level. The Lake Brienz, own bathymetry demo is the lake bed from
      swisstopo data, down to 256 m deep. Gaps in the Landsat surface
      temperature, over most of Russia half of the area or more, are filled
      by the same USGS formula with the emissivity from NDVI. The
      Temperature gaps by formula check box is on by default. The own
      terrain demos open without the Earth cutaway, themes and other layers
      left switched on.
      0.64.0 The globe opens on Linux. In 0.63.0 and earlier it crashed
      at start on AltLinux with QGIS 4.2 with the error "Buffer size too
      small". Terrain to choose in the Data sources window - height tiles,
      Copernicus DEM 30 m or GEDTM30 without forest and buildings. Up close
      the land heights come from the 30 m model, at Mount Narodnaya 1888 m
      instead of 1816 m. The images window finds MODIS products since 2000 -
      the daytime and nighttime surface temperature per day and over 8 days,
      NDVI and EVI over 16 days, snow per day and over 8 days and burned
      areas by month. The Landsat temperature tooltip explains that this is
      the surface temperature of the USGS Level-2 product, not brightness
      temperature.
      0.63.0 The images window also finds Landsat 4-9
      images since 1982, 30 m per pixel, with the thermal band and
      land surface temperature in °C. The window gets the access
      key to the files itself, no account is needed. The area around
      a point equals the width of the visible part of the globe when
      the window opens, from 1 to 100 km. Loading the same scene
      again while its layers are open no longer stops with a file
      access error, new files get a number in the name. Loading
      images could hang QGIS, it no longer does. A slider under
      My Places changes the opacity of the selected places and
      folders. Reading Pythagoras projects is removed from the
      plugin. The hang watcher runs as a separate process and
      writes its analysis to the log even when QGIS does not
      respond at all.
      0.62.3 When QGIS does not respond for more than 30 s,
      the work log writes a process dump and analyses it at once,
      the log shows in which QGIS and Qt functions every thread
      stands and what it waits for. A log with this analysis helps
      to find the cause of a hang.
      0.62.2 The Pythagoras project window leads through four
      numbered steps. After To QGIS project the window closes, the
      QGIS map and an open globe show the area, the new layers are
      checked on the globe, and the result stays in the QGIS message
      bar. Layers are named by the Pythagoras layer and the kind,
      for example Waste dump - areas.
      0.62.1 Removing layers from the project while the globe
      is open, for example loading a Pythagoras project again, could
      crash QGIS in the Python error window. The crash is fixed.
      0.62.0 A Pythagoras project (.pyt) opens in QGIS as
      GeoPackage layers, a group of point, line, area and text layers
      for every Pythagoras layer, with arcs. The window opens from
      Layer - Add Layer, from an icon above the globe Project layers
      and by dropping a .pyt file on QGIS. The Open example button
      shows an invented quarry project. A click on a layer check box
      in the globe Project layers could crash QGIS, it no longer
      does. The log records all Python errors in QGIS, memory and
      Windows objects, and a QGIS crash at the next start with the
      Python stacks of the crash.
      0.61.0 The Sentinel-2 images window searches scenes over
      an area, a square around a point or a My Places placemark, for
      a date range, with cloud cover over the area itself. Band
      combinations and the NDVI, NDWI, NDMI, NBR and NDSI indices go
      to the QGIS project as styled layers, clipped to GeoTIFF with
      clouds optionally empty or linked to the whole scene. The
      previous Sentinel-2 window crashed QGIS 4.2.1 while reading
      its catalogue, the new window does not read it.
      0.60.0 Closing the properties window of a ground image
      fitted by a box no longer brings a Python error window while
      moving the globe. Unchecking a radio folder, for example the
      MODIS images of the Aral Sea demo, hides all its places, before
      it switched to the next image. The Work log button of the About
      window opens the plugin log, if QGIS does not respond for more
      than 10 s the log records where it stopped.
      0.59.0 Depth contours in the open sea stay visible close
      up, before they vanished or broke, for example east of Japan.
      Contours no longer break at tile borders.
      0.58.0 Contours run smoothly without steps and square
      loops, close up they are built from smoothed survey heights,
      the interval is never finer than 5 m. Contours are yellow on
      satellite imagery and brown on a map. The contour scale in the
      view corner shows the interval, its To the QGIS project link
      exports the contours, its cross switches the layer off.
      0.57.0 Thicker contours are labelled with their height in
      a gap of the line, the top of the digits faces uphill. View
      contours and grid contours go to the QGIS project as a
      GeoPackage layer. A project vector layer is extruded by a
      numeric field, polygons as prisms, points as columns, lines
      as walls. The path of a recorded fly-around is edited in its
      Properties window. KML network links load a document from the
      web or disk into a My Places folder and refresh it, an example
      lies in examples/network_link. A flat lake at a contour height
      is no longer filled.
      0.56.0 The Contours layer of the Maps and layers gallery
      draws lines of equal height on the terrain, as on a
      topographic map. The interval changes with the zoom, every
      fifth contour is thicker, below sea level the lines are blue.
      The layer exists on the Earth, Mars and the Moon. Grids under
      the ground show elevation contours, every fifth one thicker.
      0.55.0 The Sentinel-2 image here… item of the globe
      menu lists Sentinel-2 acquisition days over the point with
      cloud cover and preview. The chosen scene, 10 m in natural
      colours, becomes a QGIS project layer shown on the globe.
      QGIS 4 is needed. The Windy custom item example opens the
      forecast in degrees Celsius and metres per second. The Maps
      and layers gallery opens from its Layers row, the icon bar
      has no icon for it.
      0.54.0 The route of the globe menu is built at any
      distance: Perm - Sochi, 2664 km, arrives within a second. The
      open OSRM service builds it from OpenStreetMap data, without
      network the plugin builds it over vector base roads up to
      50 km. Routes by bike. A route is found when a point stands at
      an island of roads without an exit. The icon bar has no
      Subsurface mode icon, Refresh shows only without automatic
      update, screen tour recording is named Record a flight.
      0.53.0 A raster of absolute elevations, such as a bed
      top grid, lies under the ground as a surface. The Surface by
      elevations item of the raster menu turns it on. A block with
      walls along the data edge and a floor is built under the
      grids, _top and _bottom grids make a bed slab with end walls.
      The Ground above grids slider makes the ground transparent.
      Basemaps of the Base group are chosen with a radio button.
      0.52.0 Weather maps show their values over the colours -
      temperature, precipitation, wind and clouds on an even grid.
      A placemark or a folder can hide beyond a distance, the Hide
      beyond field of the properties window. Region from Google
      Earth KML works the same way and is saved to KML. The
      Satellites tab of the Maps and layers gallery chooses the
      satellite groups with orbit previews.
      0.51.0 The globe menu has an Open in browser submenu with
      custom items - addresses with the point under the cursor, for
      example a weather forecast on windy.com. The Custom items
      window sets them. The Weather here item of the globe menu is
      removed.
      0.50.0 The time slider and the tour bar are one panel at
      the top of the view, the tour buttons form a second row under
      the slider. The day step and comparison swipe buttons are blue
      icons. The swipe line no longer crosses the view panels.
      0.49.0 A comparison swipe shows a NASA theme for two
      days side by side, by default a year apart. The Maps and
      layers icon stays pressed while a gallery map is on the globe,
      the cross on the map scale removes the map. Closing the
      gallery while previews load no longer crashes QGIS. The
      manual describes how to make a video step by step.
      0.48.0 The gallery is called Maps and layers. Next to the
      NASA maps it holds the sky, inside the Earth and terrain
      analysis layers - stars, clouds, sun, satellites,
      earthquakes, plate boundaries, Earth cutaway, paleogeography,
      slope and aspect, each with a preview. The Layers section
      keeps the base map, terrain, the gallery row and the vector
      map. The Satellite groups button chooses satellite groups.
      0.47.0 NASA maps, weather forecast, fires and surface
      temperature are gathered in the NASA maps and weather gallery
      with a preview of each map, group buttons and search. The
      Layers section is split into Base map, Map, Sky and light,
      Inside the Earth and Terrain analysis. The New placemark
      window draws a circle. A NASA theme opens on the latest
      processed day, and snow mass no longer covers snowless land.
      0.46.0 The Map sheet designation submenu of the globe
      menu shows map sheet numbers at the point - the International
      Map of the World 1:1,000,000, the Russian designation at
      1:1,000,000, 1:500,000 and 1:200,000, the NATO JOG 1:250,000
      sheet and the MGRS 100 km square. A click copies the number.
      0.45.0 The Weather group of the Layers section shows air
      temperature, precipitation, wind and clouds of the NOAA GFS
      model at the moment of the time slider, a forecast up to 16
      days ahead and the model analysis behind. The Weather here
      item of the globe menu opens the MET Norway forecast at the
      point, hourly for two days and daily for 10 days.
      0.44.0 A tour records to an MP4 video at the window size
      right away, Windows itself encodes it. PNG frame recording gets
      a size choice up to 3840 x 2160. The globe menu shows the point
      coordinates first, a click copies them. Its items are now Fly
      here, Orbit around, Directions from here and to here, What's
      here? with the place address, Measure distance, Copy link to
      place with an OpenStreetMap link, and Paste.
      0.43.0 Directions from here and Directions to here in the
      globe menu build a route by OpenStreetMap roads by car or on
      foot. The path goes into My Places with the length and travel
      time, the line under the search builds it the other way. The
      points lie up to 50 km apart. The globe menu also has Orbit
      around, Get info and Paste from clipboard. The Planet of Water
      group has the Snow over 8 days and Snow mass themes with fewer
      gaps under clouds and in the polar night than daily snow.
      0.42.1 A view straight down at a pole from thousands of
      kilometres no longer brings a Python error window. It also
      happened with the camera following a polar satellite.
      0.42.0 The Satellites row of the Layers section shows
      artificial satellites of the Earth as dots at their height.
      Stations, navigation, weather, geostationary, Starlink and
      other groups are offered. CelesTrak gives the orbital elements,
      the SGP4 model places them for the moment of the time slider
      or the clock. A click shows the number, height and speed of a
      satellite. The selected satellite shows its orbit loop and
      ground track, and the camera can follow it. The time slider
      runs at clock speeds from x1 to x86400, and the Now button
      sets the computer clock. With the Sun, satellites or the sky
      the slider opens without timed placemarks and plays on past
      its edge.
      0.41.0 A linked image overlay is read again after the
      interval of the new Refresh field while it is shown, a web
      address past the cache. The globe keeps a fresh image or map
      that a server updates by itself. KML refreshMode onInterval and
      refreshInterval are read and written.
      0.40.0 Tracks and project layers with QGIS time follow the
      time slider of the globe. A track grows up to the right handle,
      a layer with time shows only its objects within the slider range,
      on the picture and in the labels. The QGIS Temporal Controller no
      longer acts on the globe. A scene keeps the slider range.
      0.39.0 The Data sources… button of the View properties window
      opens a window with all globe sources, their terms of use and an
      availability check. It sets own terrain (Terrarium or Mapbox
      Terrain-RGB) and an own vector base (OpenMapTiles TileJSON), adds,
      edits and removes base maps.
      0.38.0 The Fires row of the Planet of Fire group shows fire
      spots over the last 24 hours from the NASA FIRMS feed. Fires are
      chosen in the same list as the NASA themes, either the fires or one
      theme is on. The colour and size of a dot show the radiative power,
      the spots stand on the time slider, a click in the Identify mode
      shows the power and the image time. A layer legend shows also when
      it is the first one on the legend panel.
      0.37.0 With the Sun row city lights shine on the night side
      of the Earth from the NASA Black Marble image. In the twilight they
      fade together with the night, under clouds they are weaker.
      0.36.0 A height raster of the QGIS project becomes the globe
      terrain within its extent, the Globe terrain item of the raster menu
      in the Project layers section. At the edge of the extent the heights
      change smoothly to the common terrain, within the extent the terrain
      is more detailed, down to the raster pixel. The Quarry, own terrain
      demo is a synthetic 1 m survey of a quarry with benches and a waste
      dump near Berezniki. The right-click menu on the globe and dragging
      of ruler points, new placemark vertices, Earth cutaway corners and
      ground overlay corners work again, in 0.34.0 and 0.35.0 they broke
      off with an error. A click on the base map checkbox no longer opens
      a Python error window.
      0.35.0 A ground overlay, or all ground overlays of a folder,
      goes into the QGIS project as GeoTIFF raster layers by the corners
      of the image, in the PlanetX - images group. The Aral Sea demo
      shows the three kinds of overlays by links to web addresses. These
      are MODIS images of 2000, 2014 and 2023 as radio buttons, a photo
      of the ships at Moynaq and a basin map on the screen. QGIS 3.36 no
      longer crashes on exit when My Places hold ground overlays.
      0.34.0The Add submenu of a My Places folder adds a ground
      overlay, a photo and a screen overlay. A ground overlay is placed
      by a box with rotation or by four corners, with handles to move,
      rotate and stretch it, as in Google Earth. The image is kept in
      the places file or as a link to a file or web address. Google
      Earth overlays open from KML and KMZ and save back with images.
      The time slider is one time of the view: a NASA theme takes the
      day of the right handle, placemarks and earthquakes the range.
      Without events the slider has one handle and steps over the theme
      series. The legends stand as one panel. The assistant button left
      the Search field, a topic typed there becomes placemarks, the
      assistant settings are in the View properties window.
      0.33.0 Paleogeography shows land relief and sea depths of
      the past after the PALEOMAP PaleoDEM maps, up to 540 million years
      ago. Changing the age and playing ages no longer stall the view.
      The Planet of Fire, Planet of Water, Gases and Land and Life groups
      of the Layers section show 21 NASA GIBS themes - smoke, carbon
      monoxide, precipitation, snow, sea ice, gases, vegetation, night
      lights and others. The day of a theme is set by its own slider,
      a legend stands in the corner of the view.
      0.32.0 The Subsurface mode icon shows drill holes along
      their survey, bed roofs, section walls with images, tunnels and
      a cut block under the surface, with a transparent surface and
      a camera underground. The data are ordinary project layers,
      checked layers go under the globe in 3D and take their style
      and labels from QGIS. A polygon of My Places cuts the model,
      a path puts a section wall, the Model section window shows the
      beds along a path. The Demo icon opens Permian deposits with
      a tour and Vegas Loop tunnels. The Manual link of the About
      window opens the PDF in the system viewer.
      0.31.0 A topic in the Search line for which no places are
      found, for example Voyages of Columbus, turns into placemarks at
      once. Placemarks that the assistant proposes in a conversation
      show below the Search line with the Write to My Places link.
      While the Properties window of a placemark, path or polygon is
      open, its vertices can be dragged on the globe, OK writes the
      shape too. The Edit shape and Rename items left the menus, the
      name and the shape are changed in the Properties window.
      0.30.0 Paleogeography shows continents without holes or
      water strips inside, with coasts four times finer, about 5 km at
      the equator. An age opens in a fraction of a second instead of
      6-25 s. Relief is off in this mode, and the loading icon shows
      while a map loads.
      0.29.0 The Search line suggests your places and earlier
      queries while you type, and stars and constellations in the sky.
      Enter on the exact name of your place flies to it without a
      network request. Assistant places are richer: up to 100 places,
      routes along the real path, territories as polygons and times
      wherever they are known. Route stages grow on the time slider.
      The answer arrives as a stream with a count of places and a Stop
      link that keeps the places already complete. After a search by
      name, the Make places on "topic" link turns a topic into
      places. KML tracks gx:Track open as lines with a time span.
      Assistant places are read when the model writes spaces after
      commas, time inside a line, a polygon without an outer boundary
      or HTML in a description. Years before the common era are written
      correctly, and years longer than four digits are read.
      0.28.0 The Plate boundaries row shows the lithospheric
      plate boundaries after the PB2002 model: red where plates move
      apart, green along transform faults, blue where they converge.
      Plate names show as labels. The Features window shows the
      boundary type, the plate pair and the speed in mm/yr.
      0.27.2 The plugin works as in 0.27.1. Stress checks of
      the base map loading are added for the developers.
      0.27.1 The assistant is one button by the Search field.
      A click makes places from a description, the arrow opens the
      conversation and the settings. The assistant icon is no longer
      on the icon bar. Clear My Places… removes all placemarks and
      folders after a confirmation.
      0.27.0 A button by the Search field makes places from a
      description, for example "the voyage of Columbus". The model
      answers with one KML document, the places appear in My Places
      and on the globe at once and the camera flies to them. Events
      carry their dates, the time slider opens on them. The Cancel
      link below the field removes the places. The Demo icon opens
      the Japan Trench with earthquakes and an Earth cutaway across
      the subduction zone. A scene keeps the cutaway sector.
      0.26.0 The Search field understands requests in words, for
      example "show a section across the Japan Trench". The request
      goes to the assistant, the answer appears below the field. Place
      names and coordinates are found as before. The assistant works
      with Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, OpenRouter and an own service of the
      OpenAI Chat format, for example Ollama on this computer.
      OpenRouter with free models is chosen by default, its key is
      free. Ollama works without a key and without the internet. The
      Assistant window shows the conversation, the service, model and
      key are in the Assistant settings window. The key is kept in the
      QGIS profile settings without the master password by default.
      0.25.1 The Assistant icon opens a conversation with the
      Claude or Grok AI model. On a request in words the model flies,
      switches Layers rows, sets the Earth cutaway and sections and
      answers about points and earthquakes. It proposes placemarks
      as KML, they are written after confirmation. An API key of
      your own is needed, it is kept in the QGIS password manager.
      The Features window also shows My Places placemarks,
      earthquake foci, the Moho, crust and slab under the point.
      The Paleogeography row shows the coastlines of the past up to
      a billion years ago. The globe window always opens on today's
      Earth.
      0.25.0 The Earthquakes row of the Layers panel shows
      the earthquakes of the last 30 days from the USGS feed at their
      depth, coloured by depth and sized by magnitude. The Earth
      section row takes a sector out of the Earth and shows the crust,
      mantle, core and subducting slabs on its faces, its corners are
      dragged with the mouse. Section down in the menu of a path draws
      a section of the Earth along the path in a window and as a wall
      on the globe.
      Terrain shows sea and ocean depths under translucent water.
      Vertices in the New placemark window are dragged with the mouse,
      the circle in the middle of a segment adds a vertex, a click on
      the first point closes the shape. A right click on the globe
      opens a menu, Edit shape there edits a saved placemark, path or
      polygon. The globe updates automatically by default.
      0.24.1 The Demo icon has a Jezero crater scene on Mars
      with the Perseverance landing site, an elevation profile across
      the crater, a point for the viewshed, a flight around and the
      slope colouring. Depressions of Mars and the Moon deeper than
      3 km, such as Isidis and Hellas, are no longer covered by a
      blurred patch of imagery.
      0.24.0 Terrain analysis. Slope and Aspect rows of the
      Layers panel colour the Earth, Mars and the Moon by terrain
      slope classes or by the compass direction slopes face. Viewshed
      from here in the menu of a point placemark colours the places
      seen from it green and the hidden ones red, with observer and
      target heights. Insolation shows the hours of direct sunlight
      per day for chosen dates, with mountain shadows. The point of the
      elevation profile no longer jumps to earlier places of the same
      height.
      0.23.0 Folders of My Places have a properties window:
      name, description, view, allow expanding and show contents as
      option buttons, with radio buttons in the list. A double click
      or Fly to goes to the folder view or frames its places. The
      folder menu has Add, Cut, Snapshot folder view and Sort A-Z,
      folder properties are kept in KML. The Base map group of the Layers panel switches
      imagery at once. Add tile source opens a window that takes a tile
      address in any form, shows a world mosaic, finds the most detailed
      level and saves the source as a QGIS XYZ Tiles connection. The
      tour bar and the time slider have the same blue buttons, the time
      slider plays in a loop.
      0.21.0 Sixteen more bodies in the Body menu: Mercury,
      Venus, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Mimas, Enceladus,
      Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Iapetus, Ceres and Vesta, with global
      NASA and USGS imagery. The Earth heads the menu, other bodies sit
      in short submenus. Jupiter fits the view as a whole.
      0.20.0 Mars and the Moon have terrain: mountains,
      craters and plains from NASA MOLA and LOLA heights, with the same
      vertical scale as on the Earth. The loop button on the tour bar
      repeats the tour from the first stop. Closing the globe window
      on Mars or the Moon no longer ends with an error.
      0.19.0 The Body icon of the icon bar puts Mars or the
      Moon in place of the Earth, with their own imagery, and a place
      keeps its body. The Sky item shows the starry sky from the centre
      of the celestial sphere: the Milky Way, stars, constellation
      lines and names, the Sun, the Moon and the planets at the time
      set by the time slider or the computer clock. Places, tours and
      tour recording work in the sky. The Demo icon with an academic
      cap opens prepared scenes: Perm and Boca Chica, landing sites on
      Mars and the Moon, constellations and bright objects in the
      sky.
      0.18.0 Sun light with the night side of the Earth by
      the time slider or the clock. 3D path and 3D polygon of the
      ruler over roofs and walls of 3D buildings, kept in My Places
      and KML.
      0.17.3 The placemark time slider opens with a button on
      the icon bar or by itself on a flight to a dated view, a
      closed slider shows all placemarks.
      0.17.2 The description, manual and changelog describe
      the plugin in its own words.
      0.17.1 The navigation controls in the corner of the
      view are always shown, as a faint outline away from the
      cursor and in full near it. Tooltips describe the plugin in
      its own words.
      0.17.0 Ruler with ground length, heading and dragging
      of points. Elevation profile of lines and paths. Coordinates
      in degrees, DMS, UTM or MGRS, search understands all four.
      Placemark icons, placemark time with a time slider,
      recording a tour from the screen, all kept in
      KML. The Perm demo in the Scene menu.
      0.16.0 3D buildings in the Layers panel.
      OpenStreetMap buildings rise as blocks when the camera
      is closer than 6 km to the ground, with the height from
      OpenStreetMap or from the number of floors. They are off by
      default. A scene remembers the rows of the Layers panel.
      0.15.0 Any place can have a view of its own:
      look point, range, heading and tilt. Snapshot view in the
      place menu and the Place view section of the properties set it,
      fly-to and tours follow it, KML keeps it as LookAt. A slider on
      the tour bar shows how much of the tour has passed and winds it.
      The manual explains how to make an MP4 video from recorded frames.
      0.14.0 A spinning icon to the right of the icon bar shows
      that loading goes on, it turns orange when loading stalls.
      0.13.0 Labels of vector project layers on the globe, like
      city names: level at any turn and tilt, without overlaps, with
      the text, colour and size of the layer labels in QGIS.
      0.12.0 Land and sea temperature from NASA data in the
      Layers panel, off by default. A scale in degrees Celsius is shown
      in the bottom left corner of the view. The coordinate grid with
      labels no longer breaks drawing with an error, the fault came in
      0.10.0.
      0.11.0 The Milky Way behind the Earth,
      from the NASA sky map. The sky image is downloaded once when the
      stars are first shown. Files of GitHub releases and other
      redirected tiles now load in QGIS 3.
      0.10.0 A coordinate grid: the step follows
      the camera height, lines are labelled, the equator, tropics and
      polar circles are yellow. Stars around the Earth at their places in
      the sky. Clouds from NASA imagery of the last complete day, in the
      Layers panel. Translucent own lines and walls no longer turn dark.
      0.9.0 Copy and paste in My Places: places
      and folders go to the clipboard as KML text, which can be edited in
      a text editor and pasted back. The place properties window no longer
      blocks the globe, changes show at once and a Ground - Space slider
      sets the height. A PDF manual with pictures in Russian and English
      ships with the plugin and opens from About.
      0.8.0 On-screen navigation controls: the
      compass ring with N, the look and move sticks and the height slider
      with plus and minus appear in the top right corner of the view. A
      check box in the view properties keeps them on screen. The view
      properties open from the icon bar. The About window describes the
      features, controls and requirements.
      0.7.0 Mouse and keys: double click zooms to
      a point, right drag zooms, Ctrl looks around, arrows, PageUp,
      PageDown, N, U, R and Space. The left panel has collapsible
      sections Places, Project layers and Layers. Several places are
      selected with Ctrl and Shift, deleted with Del, shown, hidden and
      dragged together. A double click on a project layer flies to it.
      A manual in Russian and English opens from About.
      0.6.1 My Places shows an icon of the kind before each name -
      placemark, path, polygon or saved view. A new placemark gets a
      numbered name at once, My placemark 1, My path 1, View 1, each kind
      counts on its own.
      0.6.0 Scenes: the whole view - camera, time, layers, settings
      and a My Places folder with its tour - saves to a file and opens on
      another computer. Database passwords stay out of the file. The
      record button on the tour bar saves the tour as PNG frames for a
      video, each frame waits for the tiles. The status line shows what
      is still loading and when loading has stalled.
      0.5.2 Growing tracks: Track in the menu of a point layer shows
      it as paths of its objects along the QGIS Temporal Controller, with
      the camera following along the motion if wanted. Labels no longer
      break drawing in QGIS 3.40 with an old PyOpenGL. No errors after the
      globe is closed. A frame no longer stops on an OpenGL error left by
      another plugin.
      0.5.1 The base map no longer stops loading and stays blurred,
      the fault came in 0.5.0. The globe turns as smoothly with large
      places, such as the regions of a country from KML, as without them.
      Place properties: name, description, colors,
      height above ground and extending to the ground, a path becomes a
      wall and a polygon a block. KML files: Open KML or KMZ puts
      the file into My Places with folders, styles and views, Save as KML
      writes a folder back.
      0.5.0 Tours: Play tour flies over the
      checked places of My Places or a folder, a saved view restores its
      height, heading and tilt, along a path the camera travels the line.
      Folders in My Places with dragging of places and folders. View
      snapshot to PNG or JPEG larger than the window, the view into a
      QGIS layout as a picture embedded in the project. Transparency and
      properties of project layers in the globe list. Hide sidebar
      button. Camera motion goes first, tiles load less often while
      moving.
      0.4.3 The plugin passes the Qt 6 check of the QGIS plugin
      repository. Nothing changes in the globe itself.
      0.4.2 My Places is a folder right under the Globe row,
      shown even when empty. Its check box shows or hides
      all places, a double click on a place flies there. Save view is a
      button of its own and puts a placemark that restores the height,
      heading and tilt. The QGIS bookmarks menu is removed.
      0.4.1 A large polygon no longer hangs QGIS while it is drawn.
      Arrow cursor over the globe, closed hand while dragging, cross for
      the ruler, new placemark and identify.
      0.4.0 My Places: placemarks, paths and
      polygons drawn on the globe and saved in a shared file. Ruler with
      line, path, polygon and circle on the WGS84 ellipsoid, measurements
      saved to My Places. QGIS bookmarks and Save view with heading and
      tilt. Selection both ways between the map and the globe. Layers as
      on the QGIS map and new layers straight to the globe. Less detailed
      imagery instead of gray tiles where detailed imagery is missing.
      0.3.2 Synchronization with the QGIS map window in any coordinate
      system. Identify features by a click on the globe. Coordinates and
      elevation under the cursor in the status line. Borders, place names
      and terrain are on by default, other layers off.
      0.3.1 Place search by name, with a red pin
      on the place found and a list of other matches. Search runs through
      Nominatim.
      0.3.0 Esri World Imagery by default. Project layers on the
      globe in the QGIS map order. Layers panel with
      borders, place and water names, roads and road numbers, railways,
      airports, rivers, lakes, peaks and protected areas. Labels
      with a choice of language. Terrain can be
      switched off, vertical exaggeration. Refresh button and automatic
      refresh. Own PlanetX toolbar.
      0.2.0 Terrain relief with hill shading, the camera stays above
      the ground. Atmosphere: glow around the planet, sky and haze at the
      horizon. Base map list with OpenStreetMap and the XYZ Tiles
      connections of QGIS, for example satellite imagery. About window.
      0.1.1 The PlanetX button is now on the Plugins toolbar. The Web
      toolbar, where it was before, is hidden in QGIS by default.
      0.1.0 First release. Globe with the OpenStreetMap base map,
      grab-the-Earth navigation with inertia, zoom to the cursor, turn
      and tilt, fly-to coordinates.
