Questions and Answers- 11.1. I cannot see my house on the map / Why should I use Marble if there is Google Earth already?
- 11.2. Why is Marble so fast although I don't have hardware acceleration enabled? / Why doesn't Marble run smoothly on my expensive 3D graphics card?
- 11.3. Will I ever have to pay for Marble?
- 11.4. How can I contribute?
11.1. | I cannot see my house on the map / Why should I use Marble if there is Google Earth already? |
Marble aims to be a lightweight fast educational geographical browser that easily runs on any platform that is supported by Qt™. While higher resolution maps would be nice to have they aren't necessary for every user and every use case (just like you don't use a full blown text processor each time you just need a simple editor). Also notice Marble is free software and is based on data that can be freely redistributed in the same way that applies to Free Software. | |
11.2. | Why is Marble so fast although I don't have hardware acceleration enabled? / Why doesn't Marble run smoothly on my expensive 3D graphics card? |
Despite depicting the earth as a globe Marble doesn't make use of any 3D hardware acceleration. This has the advantage of running at a decent speed on any platform and hardware supported by Qt™. However it has the disadvantage that it doesn't run as smoothly as it could if it used hardware accelerated OpenGL. Marble just uses plain 2D graphics and therefore requires a graphics adapter that is fast at drawing 2D graphics. We plan to add an optional OpenGL backend in the future. | |
11.3. | Will I ever have to pay for Marble? |
No, never. But the authors always welcome feedback. Marble is licensed under the LGPL, so you will never have to pay for this program. | |
11.4. | How can I contribute? |
Marble is not only an application but also a Free Software project. As such it's easy to join: just contact us via the marble-devel mailing list (marble-devel@kde.org). |