Travel
The ability to use your computer to travel goes beyond logging into your travel agent's site. You may travel right from your computer in ways you might not have even imagined. See earth from thousands of feet high or See earth as a globe from outer-space. Visit the world's most beautiful museums, art galleries, exhibitions and more.
Google Earth
You may literally explore the world using Google Earth. You can choose to use the Web version to explore the world on the web with your browser, on your mobile device or better yet, install Google Earth Pro on your Desktop. It is an amazing program that makes you feel like your flying around the globe to remote destinations. As a matter of fact, you can do just that.
Just Pick the type of plane you want to fly by choosing a Viper jet fighter with speeds of Mach 2 or a high-performance propeller airplane that can travel over 212 mph. Just click on the image on the right to see a typical flightplan.
The program lets you start at your current
location or you may select airports around the world as your starting
point. Using the keyboard controls are a little tricky and may take you
a little while to master but if you have a joystick attached
to your
computer it will
automatically pick up its input and make flying a lot easier.
Do flybys of your childhood home, visit places you only dreamed about like the pyramids in Egypt or South America, the strange Nazca lines in southern Peru, fly to the Grand Canyon to Hawaii.
If quick fly-bys are not your thing, you can do close up visits to almost anywhere. Yes, Google Earth does use some satellites for some of the long distance views but the stunning resolutions of many of their "satellites views" are actually taken with high-resolution cameras in airplanes. These photos can see the laces on a pair of shoes. In addition we are all familiar with Google cars that take the land based photos. That is why you can fly into a location and then use the street view to actually walk around and see things up close,. What does your childhood home look like now? Your old high school.
You can even take some of their beautiful pre-loaded tours. If the view you want is not available you might see it in the hundreds of thousands of photos and videos made from travelers. If you have never used Google Earth you are in for a surprise. It even allows you to go back in time. If the area you search was scanned in the past at any time after 1985 you can select the year and watch a town grow or river shrink. Watch lake Mead water levels shrink from 2000 to 2021.
Visible Earth
A completely different type of program, Visible Earth, gives you views of Earth and other celestial objects from the view of outer-space. While Visible Earth does not provide road side views they do provide stunning images from space that show a different view of how things like Global Warming, hurricanes like the most recent hurricane Ida and the toll it takes on the cities it hits. Like Google Earth, several of the views can be seen as they were in 1976 to the present. Checkout Tokyo at night and the lights used. Each photo comes with a short story explaining the view in detail.
If you checkout the About page on this site, there are several
links to museums around the world. From the French Louvre with it's 360
degree view of
the the outside and several 360 views of the exhibitions.
The world famous Guggenheim offers an online collection of over
1700 artworks by more than 625 artists. All searchable and available at
your fingertips several mediums and famous artists. Like one of my
favorites Paul Gauguin's "Haere Mai" Just click on the
image to see the masters work.
You don't have to make the trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see some of its famous works and the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican is only one of several 360 degree tours. There are even sections like: "Discover the Masterpieces" that would be hard to find time to visit in person.
Each of these sites offer hundreds of collections of amazing are but this is only a very small collection of sites that are available on the web. Don't be afraid to explore. As long as you follow the safety precautions and check with your protection software to prevent phishing scams or infected downloads you should be able find anything you want online.
@desertskycomp