Support

About
How to buy
Navigation with GPS device
Fleet tracking and management based on Earth Explorer
Details & Tips

Here we provide the most frequently asked questions and their answers in a hope to provide solution for you before you contact us at support@motherplanet.com .

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. About

1. What is Earth Explorer?

Earth Explorer 6.0 is GPS Enabled digital map software with high-resolution satellite imagery, shaded relief topographic imagery and blending imagery of the two. It also include location information of 270 countries and regions, 50000+ cities, 15000+ islands and 50000+ earthquakes from 1973; And outline information of political boundaries, rivers, lakes, coastlines of the world etc. All those map information was integrated together for providing a total 3D view of our beautiful planet earth. You can place your own placemarks and path routes to the map, show GPS tracks on the map and keep them with the maps if you already connected with a GPS device. Beside these, it has many other interesting functions, you can regard it as a kind of educational scientific software of geography.

2. How does it work?

Earth Explorer is a easy-to-use software. When you exploring the earth surface, imagery data is streamed to you PC from our web server and cached to your disk. With the multi-resolution and tiled image technology, you can access this huge information set and don't need to worry about your computer's memory limit.

3. What is the advantage of the Advanced License than the Standard License?

Earth Explorer with advanced license has two advanced features than Earth Explorer with standard license:
1) 250% speed to load map data from Earth Explorer remote server when you explore the not cached imagery.
2) User can start/stop threads to download maps data in background. This allow you to cache the maps data of a defined region to your disk, and used it without internet connection, such as use the Earth Explorer as a GPS navigation software on a plane, boat or a car. Please make sure you have enough disk space to cache the maps data, whole maps data of the world used by Earth Explorer is about 40GB.

2. How to Buy

4. Is your online order form secure?

Yes, it is 100% secure.

5. Is tech support free?

Yes! It's free for all.

6. Does it accept phone, fax and Euro checks orders?

Yes, it does. Please visit http://www.motherplanet.com for detail information.

3. Navigation with GPS device

7. What kind of GPS device supported by Earth Explorer?

Earth Explorer support NMEA-0183 compatible GPS mouse, CF GPS, Bluetooth GPS and other GPS receiver.

8. How to connect GPS device with Earth Explorer?

You can select the menu “GPS > Connect to GPS...” to connect to your GPS device. Earth Explorer will scan serial ports for possible GPS device at the first time. If successful the parameters will be saved as a default.

9. Can I display the GPS track in Earth Explorer?

Yes, you can display GPS track in Earth Explorer through check the menu item “GPS > show GPS track”.

10. Can I add/edit/display GPS tracks in Earth Explorer?

Yes, you can. Please check the menu “GPS > Automatic Add GPS track to Track List” to add GPS track. When you select the menu “GPS > Disconnect” or exit the program GPS track will be added to the Track List. Edit the track, please select it from the table list and click it with the right-button of your mouse, a edit/delete choice will appear. To display the GPS Tracks map in Earth Explorer, please check the menu “Maps > GPS Tracks”.

4. Fleet tracking and management based on Earth Explorer

11. Can Earth Explorer report my location to GIS database of our company in realtime?

Yes. Earth Explorer must connect with a GPS receiver to get the geographic information of your location in realtime at first; then you need to set Earth Explorer to report the location information to a remote server periodically through the menu:GPS->Report Location. The remote URL should receive the information and put it to the GIS database after processing.

12.How to display a living map of a vehicle fleet with Earth Explorer?

Earth Explorer can fetch living map data from a web location periodically. You fleet member should report their location to GIS database first, then you should add a user-definable map with living style , the content of <list></list> node in the map definition file set to a web link, the web server should generate the data source content of the map as the required content in realtime when Earth Explorer request the link. So Earth Explorer will display the thematic living map. This can provide a solution to tracking/monitoring a vehicle/ship/airplane fleet in real time.

5. Details & Tips

13. What is different between registered version and unregistered version?

The unregistered version will hint you to register the software.

14. Does the un-registered version have a date expire limit?

Although the unregistered version is for evaluation purpose only, no date limit for free trial.

15. Does Earth Explorer need an internet connection?

Earth Explorer need an internet connection (broad band is better) to stream the maps data when you browser the maps. But if you have cached the data required to you disk cache, it will not access the internet.

16. What is the maximum resolution of the earth surface image?

The maximum imagery resolution of Earth Explorer is 30m per pixel. But you can set it to 10m, 5m or 1m per pixel to display GPS tracks clear.

17. What is the meaning of 1m resolution?

1m resolution is meaning a point in the picture represent a 1m*1m square in the real earth surface.

18. Do you provide Mac version of Earth Explorer?

Yes. We provide Earth Explorer for Mac OS X.

19. Is it free to upgrade it version 5.0 to the version 6.0?

Yes. It's free for customers, who had purchased previous versions of Earth Explorer, to upgrade to Earth Explorer 6.0. Just installed it and register it with the license information you have.

20. I have more questions; how can I contact you?

Please send your additional questions to support@motherplanet.com .