Very Goldeneye-esque looks good though. am i to understand that the part of the geoscape highlighted is the range of the satallite used??? if so that makes for an interesting element in the game

The lighted area looks to me like the daylit half of the globe. Note the city lights that appear only in the night half, and close to the terminator. Nice attention to detail, in that the axial tilt of the planet and the distortion due to the map projection are both taken into account.

In other words, just like in the original games, there are both night and day missions.

James - the images look so good because they are real satellite images... I love both the day and night images of the Earth and have the posters of them both ;) The images are called 'Earth by Day' and 'Earth by Night' and are constructed from 1-square-mile resolution satellite images stitched into composites... hence the Earth looks just like it really does :D I love it though - nice look!

I like the way you've done this picture.

This is a good photo. Nice and clear. What camera do you use?