3D World Atlas is a virtual globe program developed by the Cosmi Corporation. At Version 2.1, it is one of the leading atlas programs, along with other 3D atlas exploring programs such as Google Earth .
3D World Atlas was created by the Cosmi Corporation in 1999. It was programmed by Ron Paludan and the research was done by Eve Paludan. Information came from the 1999 World Factbook by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
As an atlas software, the 3D World Atlas has many features. These include, but are not limited to, world maps on a 3D globe, thousands of tables and charts, national flags, and a world clock. The software also includes distance measuring and in-depth information on every country, including independence days, government types, and such. There are many tools you can use on the program. These all perform basic tasks helping the viewer in understanding the world. A zoom feature allows you to zoom into countries, and lists major cities, a print option allows you to print the current display of a page, and a find button allows you to find any city, country, river, lake, or continent within seconds.
A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of the Earth. World maps form a distinctive category of maps due to the problem of projection. Maps by necessity distort the presentation of the earth's surface. These distortions reach extremes in a world map. The many ways of projecting the earth reflect diverse technical and aesthetic goals for world maps.
World maps are also distinct for the global knowledge required to construct them. A meaningful map of the world could not be constructed before the European Renaissance because less than half of the earth's coastlines, let alone its interior regions, were known to any culture. New knowledge of the earth's surface has been accumulating ever since and continues to this day.
Maps of the world generally focus either on political features or on physical features. Political maps emphasize territorial boundaries and human settlement. Physical maps show geographic features such as mountains, soil type or land use. Geological maps show not only the surface, but characteristics of the underlying rock, fault lines, and subsurface structures. Choropleth maps use color hue and intensity to contrast differences between regions, such as demographic or economic statistics.