Bhuvan - India’s own Desi Google Earth
Google Earth is a pioneer as far as giving public access to amazing satellite photographs, way back in 2005. But now taking on the mighty Google Earth is India’s very own Bhuvan, which was launched on August 12. Let’s take it for a spin to see how it fares.
Alright before we go into Bhuvan, let’s get some facts and expectations straight…
1. Bhuvan means Earth in Hindi and Sanskrit
2. Bhuvan is developed by ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation (Informative Wikipedia link recommended) with a very important role played by National Remote Sensing Agency (Wikipedia link)
3. Data is provided by satellites including Cartosat-1 & 2 and Resourcesat-1 to get the best possible imagery for India. To know more about the satellites used, click here.
3. Bhuvan isn’t made from scratch, but is based on TerraExplorer software - a product of Skyline Software Systems.
4. Bhuvan hopes to offer superior imagery of Indian locations specifically with spatial resolutions ranging from 10 m to 100 m. But this kind of detail isn’t readily available yet. If it were, Bhuvan would then be better than the free version of Google Earth, which can display up to 200m.
5. The imagery will steer clear of all sensitive military installations in India for obvious security concerns. So expect blurry or sections entirely missing. This is especially true due to the fact that Mumbai terrorist Azam Ameer Qasab claimed that Google Earth was used for planning attacks.
6. Much like Apple Time Capsule (though not as elegant), Bhuvan offers various dates where you can rollback and see the difference between new and old imagery.
7. Bhuvan claims that instead of every four years or so, its images will be upgraded every year. (This is a little hard to swallow as of now and remains to be seen)
8. Bhuvan packs a lot of data that Google lacks, such as on weather, water bodies and population details of various administrative units.
To know detailed features, jump to ISROBHUVAN’s blog. (Note: The blog seems unofficial)
Free Download for Bhuvan - System Requirement
Installation is something that is taken for granted nowadays, it is something that has been greased over the years to be a very smooth process. Bhuvan’s installation too was an equally well-greased, however finding the damn download and figuring out what was wrong with it was a pain. Let me explain, my troubles started as I had downloaded an older Bhuvan setup, which I didn’t know about + using the unrecommended Firefox I couldn’t for the life of me understand what was going on.
Apparently Bhuvan works with only Internet Explorer, so before you go through a painful process like I did; here are the minimum system specs you need.
As per Bhuvan’s unofficial blog
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista;
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400 XP+
System Memory (RAM): 512MB
Hard Disk: 2GB free space
Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
Screen: 1280 1024, 32-bit True Colour
Except for the main system, internet speed and screen resolution is exceptionally high for an average system. To have an internet speed of 768Kbits/sec is almost double the cost of 256Kbits/sec and this in no way is optimized for a normal broadband connection; broadband defined by TRAI in India is minimum 256Kbits/sec. By the way Tata Broadband has some great schemes in these speeds.
But considering that those on MTNL’s broadband service will be very lucky to get smooth performance, as even regular MTNL’s speeds are anyway from 256Kbits to 2MB max. For those like me with a fixed 384Kbits/sec (Tata line) are strictly under the Minimum spec. However, MTNL users be warned, watch your Bhuvan/Google Earth usage, as downloading so many images so fast will definitely eat your bandwidth.
Secondly, a screen resolution of 1280×1024 is quite a high resolution, as most people still use the ever popular 1024×768 or basic wide-screen of 1440×900. Brief testing on 1024×768 did not cause any issues, but yes the screen size to view Earth is much smaller. However, I do not understand the logic of recommending this as the minimum spec. A minimum spec is the least something needs to function, I do not think Bhuvan needs 1280×1024 as minimum, it probably is not optimum either, just mid level.
I’m happy and proud that the Indian Government is taking the right initiative toward developing such an app. But Bhuvan is strictly in Beta stage, especially as far as usability is concerned, and the horrid website definitely needs a major overhaul. But at the same time if the proposed features come to fruition, it will be much better than Google Earth’s rendition of India. Though of India alone!
It is really nice to see that a specialised app like this being developed for India by the Indian Government. Who knows, when it does catch up, it could use higher images for rest of the world.
But as of today, I wouldn’t recommend this app to anyone. It simply doesn’t give any value as yet. But I know I would definitely like to revisit Bhuvan in the coming months when it matures. And yes, I’m eagerly awaiting it.
Take a look at Bhuvan and tell us what you think about it. http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/
Bhuvan Video - India’s own Desi Google Earth
Source : http://www.techtree.com
