Chistoph Hormann has been creating numerous views of the earth using RayTracer POV-Ray. The result are stunning and slightly eerie images of various parts of the earth - eerie in that there are no clouds anywhere. Hormann is short on technical details (What data was used? What pocesses were followed? How much are elevations enhanced?) but the final product is beautiful - even viewers used to the easy manipulations of Google Earth and World Wind. Images are browseable via a map or a simple listing. A nice touch is a map showing the field of view of each image.

By way of Tecnomaps.