Surface Maps | Bump, Normal, Spec Maps | Cloud Maps | Night Maps | Close-ups | Other Earth Files
 
This page contains surface textures for the planet Earth.
Most textures here are based on data from the NASA project Blue Marble, but have been modified in various ways to enhance colors etc. The original Blue Marble data had a resolution of 42K (43200x21600), but the improved dataset "Blue Marble Next Generation" was made available in 2005, offering a resolution of 86400x43200 and better quality in many details. Note that a 64K texture made from the original dataset has less detail than one made from the "Next Generation" dataset.
Note that "(pre)shaded" refers to textures which have a static shadow already visible on the surface. Generally this looks better than a flat surface texture, but shadows may appear at the wrong side of a mountain because shadows don't follow changes to the sun's position. A "flat" texture on the other hand has no visible shadows, and thus looks pretty dull on it's own. It's highly recommended to use a Normalmap or Bumpmap with flat surface textures, but this requires more memory and more processing power. Using a preshaded texture with a Normalmap/Bumpmap is not recommended.
Please only download what you really need and avoid unnecessary load for the servers. Thank you.