Marble is a generic geographical map widget and framework that is meant to be used by KDE4 applications. The MarbleWidget shows the earth as a sphere but doesn't make use of any hardware acceleration (No OpenGL). So although it might look similar to applications like Google Earth or Nasa World Wind it's rather meant to be a small light weight multi purpose widget.

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  Marble uses a minimal free dataset that can be used offline. Currently the total amount of data that is meant to be shipped is about 5-10 MB.


• Marble runs decently without hardware acceleration. It just uses Arthur as a painting backend and does NOT use OpenGL (However it largely benefits from EXA). Extending it later on to support OpenGL as well shouldn't be hard however we don't consider that the primary focus. Depending on your hardware and the maps being displayed framerate is approximately 5-30 fps.


• Marble uses vector as well as bitmap data: Currently it uses the old MWDB II data combined with elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).


• Marble displays the world map as 3D a sphere, because it's more fun to use and less subject to distortion (So with regard to that it's just like NASA WorldWind, Earth3D and Google Earth)


• Marble should start up almost instantly. Currently it "cold" starts fully within 2-5 seconds. On each subsequent start it takes about one second.