Black Sheep SystemsTerrain
Real elevation and mountain ranges, from Natural Earth data.
GAIA
A live Earth for your desktop.
Real terrain and mountain ranges, cloud cover moving on the planet's own wind currents, city lights on the night side, and network attacks spreading through the internet backbone — drawn behind your icons.
Gaia runs as an animated desktop background, as a screensaver, or both at once on separate monitors.
It needs no account, no key and no internet connection. This build makes no network requests at all — the cloud cover, the wind and the attack arcs are simulated on your own machine. Nothing about your computer leaves it, and there is nothing to sign up for.
What it draws
Cloud cover
Weather moving on the planet's own wind currents, simulated locally rather than fetched.
City lights
Drawn on the night side, so the lit half of the world is the half that is dark outside.
Attack arcs
Network attacks spreading through the internet backbone. A layer you can switch off on its own.
Real daylight
Set daylight to real and the day/night terminator sits where it actually is right now. Set it to fast for a whole day per rotation.
Your view
Rotation speed, tilt, starting longitude and camera distance are all yours — whole disc, or one hemisphere filling the screen.
Running it
Getting it on screen.
Double-click and go
Gaia is a single file. Double-click Gaia.exe and the globe appears as your desktop background, behind your icons. A small globe appears in the notification area — right-click it for the layer toggles, the settings window, and a way to quit.
The first launch is slow
Run straight from the single file, Gaia unpacks itself into a temporary folder every time it starts — anywhere from ten seconds to a couple of minutes. Installing does that once instead of every time.
Installing
Optional, but worth it if you plan to keep Gaia. Right-click the globe, choose Settings, then Install Gaia on this computer. No administrator prompt — it installs into your own user folder, appears in the Start menu, and is listed in Settings › Apps like any other program.
As a screensaver
Install Gaia first, then click Install as screensaver. Windows asks for administrator permission once; that is the only step that needs it. Then pick Gaia from the Windows screensaver list and set the wait time there. Moving the mouse more than a few pixels, or any real keypress, ends it.
Starting with Windows
Right-click the globe and tick Start with Windows. It appears in Task Manager's Startup tab, so you can switch it off there too. The option stays greyed out until Gaia is installed.
Removing it
Settings › Apps › Gaia › Uninstall. It also removes the screensaver entry, the start-with-Windows setting and Gaia's saved settings, so nothing is left pointing at a program that is gone.
Worth knowing
Before you download it.
It needs a graphics card
Gaia draws the globe with WebGL. Any machine from the last decade or so will manage it, but a very old or virtualised graphics adapter may show a black screen.
It uses real memory
Gaia carries its own browser engine to render the globe, so expect around a gigabyte of RAM while running. Quit it from the notification area when you want that back.
Windows may warn you
Gaia is not code-signed, so the first run may show “Windows protected your PC”. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
Windows only
This build is for Windows. It runs as a desktop background and a screensaver, both of which are Windows-specific.
Download
Get Gaia
Unzip it and double-click Gaia.exe. Nothing to install to try it: the globe appears as your desktop background and a small globe appears in the notification area. Installing is optional and comes later, from Gaia's own settings.
The first launch from the single file is slow — ten seconds to a couple of minutes while it unpacks. Windows may also warn you, because Gaia is not code-signed: choose More info, then Run anyway.
Where to go next