Microsoft TerraServer-USA Web Service in WMS

WMS now allows you to take advantage of Microsoft’s TerraServer-USA (http://terraserver.microsoft.com/) web service. WMS automates the process of downloading aerial photographs and topo maps for your area of interest and registers the image appropriately.

To use this web service, you need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework installed on your computer, and the terraclass.dll library needs to be installed on your computer.

Inside of WMS, zoom to the extents of the area you wish to download aerial photos or topo maps. The web service requires your coordinate system to be in either geographic coordinates or UTM NAD83. You can set your current coordinate system through the Edit -> Current Coordinates… menu if you haven’t defined it already. If you have already set a current coordinate system that is not in geographic or UTM NAD 83, you can convert to them through the Edit -> Coordinate Conversion… menu.

Choose the Get Data Tool. This tool is found in the Terrain Data, Drainage, and Map modules.

Using the Get Data Tool, drag a box around the area you want to download from the TerraServer website

WMS will then display the Data Service Options dialog. Choose the radio button for web services, and then choose which options you wish to download from TerraServer. Aerial photos and topo maps should be available for all of the US, while urban maps are only found in select urban regions.

WMS will first prompt you for the file name of the image to save. WMS saves the images from TerraServer as JPG files. The same file name is used to store a world file used to register the image. After choosing the file name, WMS will prompt you for the resolution of the image to use. WMS will suggest a resolution based on coordinates of the area you chose to download. You can choose to download maps of higher resolution, but this will take much longer to download and process.

Once the data has been downloaded and processed, it will automatically be read in by WMS.