Curious Software introduces v3.0 upgrade to mapping software

NAB 2002 in Las Vegas will see the first public demonstration of v3.0 of Curious World Maps software.
The package will allows the user to create broadcast quality, highly-detailed, still and animated maps of the world for use in broadcast television news, documentaries, video and film production and post-production, websites, and a wide range of other media. The software, which is incredibly quick and easy to use, runs on any Windows PC or Mac.
Curious World Maps are in daily use by ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, NBC, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Weather Channel and many other broadcasters around the world.
Justin Wise, Curious Software director and a member of the company’s senior engineering team, says: “Through the feedback we’ve had from our end users we have developed and applied a whole host of improvements to our existing software. These have made Curious World Maps a much more effective and powerful tool.”
The new v3.0 software incorporates a range of new features. For example, in response to demand from a growing international customer base, this new feature provides support for a variety of European and non-Latin character sets, including Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
The v3.0 allows support for very large satellite images and their transport into more common formats to be used in a wide range of new ways, such as textures for regions of a map.
There are many regions around the world where control is disputed, for example India and Pakistan’s stance over Kashmir. Curious World Maps v3.0 will allow the user to decide how they want disputed regions of the globe displayed and assigned. Once they have made this decision this becomes the users default setting.
The maps can also import highly detailed street data to create local micro-maps. A USGS DEM relief data import is supplied with built-in 1km relief data for the whole world.
Additionally, Curious World Maps v3.0 will provide support for the new Microsoft Windows XP operating system, will have load/save support for SGI format images, and will include a style-sheet setting allowing the display of internal borders in a country.
Curious World Maps, www.curious-software.com
(GMcG)