Globe sizes of 16" to 18" (41cm - 46cm) afford maximum portability, while grabbing people's attention and sparking their imagination. A globe size of 24" (61cm) adds an imposing visual experience, while remaining personal and approachable – you can walk around it and feel like “the “planet is yours”. And for maximum, stunning impact, a 3' - 6' (91cm - 1.82m) globe simply cannot be matched! No matter what the size, you can see your information or promotional media from any angle - there are no "dead spots" on the spherical display that might impact the experience.

The product comes in a portable configuration, a pedestal configuration, and a chassis configuration. Portable units can be carried by a single individual, and set up for a presentation alongside a notebook computer in little more time than it takes to set up a PC projector. Whether it's for use in a meeting room, a boardroom, on a tabletop or in a classroom, a Magic Planet display can be transported there and set up quickly and easily.

Pedestal configurations are ideal for standing exhibits or displays, such as in museums, stores, executive briefing centers, and corporate lobbies. With the Magic Planet mounted on a black matte base, visitors will feel just like they're watching the Magic Planet floating in space.

The chassis configuration is designed so that you can incorporate the Magic Planet into your own enclosure, furniture or architectural detail. The Magic Planet can become an integral part of your architectural style.

Daily operation of the Magic Planet is easy - it can be handled by almost anyone. Customers typically leave the software or media server running 24/7, and merely have someone turn the projector on and off daily. As far as operation costs, as with any projector, the bulb needs to be replaced about every 1,500 - 2,000 hrs (depending upon the particular projector), so operational costs are minimal. Magic Planet globes are made of a durable acrylic that can be cleaned with soap and water.

The Magic Planet hardware comes bundled with everything you need to run your exhibit or to display your media. With the large range of content and exhibits in the Magic Planet user community, your Magic Planet can be delivering value the day it’s installed!

Are your needs unique, and not completely addressed by the range of choices already provided? If so, Global Imagination will design and build a custom system to your exact specifications. We also provide additional hardware such as touch-screens, kiosks, computers, and shipping cases, as well as software and content development services so you can get a one-stop-shop for your needs.

End-User Software

Ready-made exhibits:   Show a premiere exhibit the day your Magic Planet is installed

The Global Imagination Customer Community contains numerous ready-made customizable exhibits freely available for the Magic Planet - as well as hundreds of images and animations.  Exhibits include Tours of the Solar System - both in English and bilingual (with languages including English, Portuguese, and Chinese, as well as Spanish and Arabic coming soon); Climate Change; Plate Tectonics; various other earth and space science exhibits; as well as one on global literacy and press freedom.  These exhibits have been developed by (or for) organizations such as NASA and the European Space Agency; Scripps Birch Aquarium; Griffiths Observatory and others, so they’re of premiere quality.  You can have any of these exhibits up and running on your Magic Planet the day it’s installed – so the Magic Planet will be delivering value immediately, even if you choose to create your own exhibit.

TourGuide™:  Create interactive media mashups for the Magic Planet (ages 13 and up)

TourGuide lets you create interactive media mashups for the Magic Planet.  In other words it lets you take global images and animations; add interactive hot spots and links anywhere on the globe; then attach media to the links.  It’s an easy-to-use tool designed to build interactive applications for the Magic Planet. People pay attention longest when they’re in control – when they’re interacting to see and hear your story in the order they want, the way they want. Many Magic Planet customers already provide a touchscreen so visitors can control their Magic Planet exhibit or display. TourGuide takes Magic Planet interactivity to the next level. With TourGuide, it’s easy to build interactive Magic Planet applications where visitors interact directly with the Magic Planet using a mouse, trackball or other input device.

TourGuide provides an intuitive GUI that lets you choose the images or animations you want to display on the Magic Planet. With a few mouse clicks you can add links on the Magic Planet that let users: navigate through your story; show a photo; run a slide show; play an audio track; play a movie; stream live media across the web (e.g. Internet TV stations and webcams); play YouTube or Flash videos; display HTML pages or pop-ups; show Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth images; etc.  TourGuide offers one of the broadest range of media types of any mashup tool. 

For example, if you wanted to create an interactive story about how species are affected by global warming, you might add a link that plays a global simulation of rising temperatures on the Magic Planet, as well as links located where affected species might be found (e.g. a link in the arctic for polar bears in the arctic; one off the coast of South America for sea turtles etc.). Clicking on one of the links on the Magic Planet might play a video there describing the impact on the species. Using TourGuide is a simple way to build compelling, interactive applications for the Magic Planet.

Or if your application is in the hospitality industry, you might add links on the globe for each of your resort locations. Clicking on the link might show more information about the resort, and even play a video walk through. It’s a great way to keep people interested in what you have to say – and with TourGuide, it’s easy to do!

Numerous samples come with TourGuide, including: “Kidzibits” (i.e. simple child-developed exhibits like “How does Global Warming affect Animals” and “ Egyptian Art Museums around the Globe”); news feeds; climate change; lesson plans; art; and many others.

iWorld™ :  Build interactive world maps for the Magic Planet

iWorld Games™ and Quiz Engine : Develop  your own interactive world games

iWorld Atlas™ :  Collect interactive world  maps to create an atlas for your exhibit

iWorld is a tool that lets you easily create interactive world maps for the Magic Planet.  It’s designed to simplify the development of exhibits where there are global statistics that you want to convey in a compelling, interactive way. Take data for countries around the world that’s in an Excel file and simply export it – whether it’s climate change data; social science data; geographic data; or any other.  Choose a color scheme for your data values and you have an interactive world map ready to go.  It’s that simple.  iWorld XML (see below) also lets you choose sophisticated visuals like backgrounds; masks; opacities; fades; rollover text; click actions and more. 

iWorld Games and Quiz Engine  lets your audience have fun with the Magic Planet by playing “interactive world games”.  A question pops up on the Magic Planet and the player has to click on the right country to answer.  iWorld Games keeps score so you can assess skills or let users compete.  Some sample games that come with iWorld Games include: Country geography (e.g. “Click on Zambia”); World Capitals (e.g. “Click on the country whose capital is Canberra ”); and a Geography Bee (e.g. “Where is the tallest building in the world?”).     iWorld Games also has a “quiz engine” so you can quickly and easily create your own games.  Simply provide a list of the questions and answers, along with some hints.  It’s that easy.

iWorld Atlas enables you to collect multiple iWorld interactive maps and provide tabs to rapidly switch among them.  You can quickly and easily create an atlas on your topic.  Samples that come with the product include atlases for: climate change; global inequality; as well as a traditional atlas (e.g. type of government; currency; land area; etc.). Keep your audience’s attention as they learn about countries around the globe.

ActiveEarth World Clocks™:  See the day/night cycle live; Click on a city and pop up a local- time clock

ActiveEarth World Clocks is based upon the popular ActiveEarth world time clock application. .  It’s an interactive application which shows a gorgeous real-time day/night cycle image on the Magic Planet, along with a “live” clock showing the time.  Click on a city, and the clock updates to that city’s local time.  Add your own cities to create your own customized world clock.  ActiveEarth World Clocks is a fun and educational application that’s sure to delight you and your guests.

Zoom! ™:   Watch images or animations on the Magic Planet, and interactively zoom in to see great detail

Zoom! is like Google Earth^TM for the Magic Planet.  Based upon the popular NASA World Wind software, it lets you watch any of the hundreds of images and animations available for the Magic Planet then interactively zoom in to see areas of interest close up.  You can show the images as a pop-up window on the Magic Planet, or on a separate HD monitor for the ultimate in rich detail.  Zoom! supports a wide variety of interaction techniques like trackballs (to select a region) ; spinners and buttons (to zoom and pan); touch-screens; etc. so you can customize it to create the exact exhibit you’d like.

Some Zoom! examples include: watching an animation of global real-time weather (see DynamicEarth below), then zooming in to see the local forecast (i.e. little symbols for sunny; cloudy; rainy; etc.); or selecting an amount of sea level rise, then zooming in and see in detail what happens to a particular coastal region.

Tools and Templates

Touchscreen templates:   Create polished, interactive touch-screens using a “fill-in-the-blanks” approach

Magic Planet customers often develop a touchscreen kiosk to provide a “self-guided” interactive capability for their installation.  To simplify this task, Global Imagination has two Flash-based exhibit touch-screens templates.  As a result, you can build your own custom touchscreen in a fraction of the time.  You simply provide the “content”, including descriptive text; animation thumbnails; related videos; and background graphics.  Then, just identify which Magic Planet animation or application corresponds to each template button or menu item and you’re done.  All the interactivity and polished graphics are built into the template. (Click on the images below to see larger views)

PowerPoint Add-In:   Use the Magic Planet as an adjunct to your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation

Add some “global excitement” to your PowerPoint presentation. With the Magic Planet PowerPoint add-in, it’s now easy to use your PowerPoint slideshow to control the Magic Planet.  When you change your slide, the animation on the Magic Planet is automatically updated.  In addition, you can add buttons and macros to your slides to provide additional interactive control of the Magic Planet.  Source code is provided.

DynamicEarth™:   Include real-time weather and real-time earthquakes in your exhibit

Magic Planet DynamicEarth enables you to display “real time” global weather and earthquake imagery on the Magic Planet.  DynamicEarth downloads high quality images from the Internet every three hours. It’s like a weather Digital Video Recorder - you can see the most recent weather “live”, or pause and go back to see a replay of the last eight weeks at your choice of speed. With DynamicEarth, not only do you get a sure-fire attraction for your audience, but you get a tool that makes understanding Earth’s dynamic systems much more rapid and intuitive.

There is a modest annual fee for the service.

iWorld XML:   Add advanced graphical  effects to your interactive world maps

iWorld XML enables you to customize your iWorld interactive maps to control visuals like backgrounds; masks; opacities; fades; mouse rollover; click actions and more.  With iWorld XML you can create highly polished, audience pleasing interactive maps in no time.

Developer Tools

StoryTeller^®:   Choreograph sophisticated interactive exhibits

StoryTeller makes it easy to choreograph your exhibit - it allows you to quickly and easily control which images your audience watches and how they interact with them.  With StoryTeller, adding Magic Planet content is simple - just drag-and-drop.   Moreover, with StoryTeller, you can immediately use the plethora of content already available in the Magic Planet Community or on the Internet - or even connect to the Internet for real-time "live" updates.  StoryTeller software reads images and animations in the Internet standard map projection for global science imagery, called the "cylindrical equidistant" projection, and transforms them in real-time for display on the Magic Planet.

StoryTeller coordinates the images and animations on the Magic Planet with audio as well as with a second screen of more detailed information. StoryTeller can run either fully automated or fully interactive, which makes the Magic Planet great both for stand alone and "facilitated" operation. This flexibility makes the Magic Planet ideal for briefing centers and lobbies that aren't staffed with presenters all the time.

If you want to control a Magic Planet from your touch-screen podium(s), it's simple to do. If your exhibit isn’t able to use one of our customizable template, and modifying the source won’t do the trick, anyone with HTML, Flash or scripting experience already has the skills they need to build one from scratch. The product also includes a remote control to maximize your ability to interact with the audience.

OnStage™:  Display and use interactive media and applications on the Magic Planet

OnStage is designed to enable interactive media and applications on the Magic Planet. OnStage is “always live” – in other words, you can display interactive simulations, live streaming media, even games on the Magic Planet in real time. OnStage works with existing, unmodified applications and video – there’s no programming involved to make them appear on the Magic Planet. Moreover, it’s completely interactive – it has advanced cursor support so you can control your applications directly while watching nothing but your Magic Planet display!

OnStage works by taking a rectangular global display from any application window and “warping it” in real-time for display on the Magic Planet. In addition, it can take a second window and map it as an “inset window” on the Magic Planet in real-time. There’s no modification required to the applications.

Some examples include mapping: global displays from satellite simulation applications onto the Magic Planet in real time; interactive Flash animations; Photoshop or AfterEffects animations under development; live streaming video from a web page or a movie player; and many others.

MPBrowser™:  Easily control multi-display exhibits

System Requirements

StoryTeller and OnStage software require only a standard notebook or desktop computer running Microsoft Windows XP with a second video output port to drive the Magic Planet projector. As a minimum, the computer should have:
- 1 GB of memory; 
- CPU speed of 1.8 Ghz or greater;
- a 3D graphics accelerator chip such as the nVIDIA GeForce with 32MB of memory. The video output port must natively support the Magic Planet projector’s resolution (1400 x 1050 for all but the low end 16” portable, which has a resolution of 1024 x 768)
- a 60 GB disk, of at least 7,200 RPM

Alternately, the Magic Planet can be driven by a DVD player or streaming media server that supports SXGA+ output (or XGA output in the case of our low end 16" portable.