Catfood Desktate - Layers

Catfood Desktate features a rich set of layers that allow you to completely customize the look and feel of the map on your desktop. This page explains how each layer is built up to create the final image.

	Catfood Desktate starts with a default map of the earth - this section shows North America in the default map. Desktate ships with two different maps and we include links to more images so that you can find the ideal starting point.
	The first optional layer is to use NASA's Blue Marble 2 imagery in place of one of the default maps. Desktate contains twelve monthly Blue Marble images and will combine (or interpolate) once per day to accurately represent the extent of snow and ice throughout the year. As well as snow and ice the images also show changing colors as vegetation greens up or dies back. These changes are imperceptible on your Desktop - watch the Seasons video to see an entire year in twelve seconds. The video was created with frames rendered by Catfood Desktate and dramatically shows the changing seasons.
	The next layer calculates the position of the sun for each pixel on the screen and combines whichever map you have chosen with a composite image of the earth at night. The resulting image shows the terminator between day and night and seamlessly blends in city lights where the earth is in darkness.
	The final "natural" layer is cloud cover. With the clouds layer enabled Catfood Desktate will download a global infra-red satellite cloud cover mosaic once every three hours. You can now see a highly accurate simulation of the Earth's surface as your Desktop wallpaper or as a screensaver. The image is updated throughout the day so you can always see where it is day and night. You can set the color of the clouds and pick any image you want so if you prefer to visualize mars with purple clouds...
	Desktate includes a flexible set of layers that can be added to the "natural" images. The borders layer includes a default map showing political borders but you could replace the borders image with rivers or coastlines or create your own layer.
	The Time Zones layer displays a clock for each time zone as well as an image that shows both time zones and the international date line. Again you can replace the default image and also choose the font and color used to render the layer.
	The final layer shows a list of places around the Earth. The default list includes cities with more than 4 million inhabitants (and San Francisco, the home of Catfood Software). You can add to or replace the list - perhaps include places you've lived, or been on holiday, or the locations of friends around the world. As with all other layers you can control the font and color used to render the layer.