erraFly offers Web surfers the chance to fly virtually over any place in the United States. Enter a street address or a ZIP code, and TerraFly displays a bird's-eye view of the location. From there, a click of the mouse is all it takes to fly in any direction. While there are Web sites that allow users to pull up satellite aerial views, TerraFly, a project of the High Performance Database Research Center at the School of Computer Science at Florida International University, stitches these static images together into a dynamic presentation that feels a little like a video.

At the home page (www.terrafly.fiu.edu), the user enters the location and TerraFly presents an aerial view and a control window that shows the spot's geographic coordinates and a compass.

Clicking on the compass in the control window allows users to move in any direction and to modify the speed. The frame rate, which can be adjusted according to bandwidth, determines the image quality. The higher the frame rate is, the better the image will be. Clicking in the center of the screen brings one to a stop. Clicking on a location onscreen brings up a window with nearby points of interest like hotels, schools or hospitals.

Advanced options include changing the source of the images and zooming in and out. Sections of the image can also be marked for purchase from TerraFly.