Biosphere 3D is an open source project aimed at interactive landscape rendering based on Virtual Earth. The software system supports multiple scales, but it is mainly used to create realistic views from the line of sight level or near ground level. The software is released under the license of MPL and developed by lennal 3D for personal computers. Biosphere 3D was first released in 2007 by the visualization and data analysis department of the Zuse Institute in Berlin. Applications include landscape planning, landscape architecture, visual impact assessment, such as wind farms, power stations, land-use planning, archaeology, urban planning and forestry, enabling them to roam through landscape scenes or nearly reconstructed historical landscapes and gardens. Biosphere 3D, originally funded by the Federal Ministry of education and Research (Germany), was designed as a pure landscape visualization system in the "silvisio" of the R & D project.
