Vasco da Gama 18 HD Ultimate includes Vasco da Gama 18 HDPro XXL and the newest version of the object & map packages:

• 3D library with over 7.800 objects
• 4,526,205 GPS database entries of major cities, towns and villages
• 262,144 pixels map size for Llnd mask, night lights, city names and country borders
• 524,288 pixel map size for mountain landscapes
• Airplanes and Airline Companies 6
• Sights
• Ships and Boats 5
• Vehicles 2
• Wild animals of the world
• Cartoons 3
• Airports Germany
• Earth Maps Adventure
• Earth Maps Aesthetic
• Earth Maps Classic
• Bonus: SatMapPro 2 Online, free use until 31.12.2025
• Bonus: Shiny Earth Maps Online, free use until 31.03.2025

Vasco da Gama 18 is the preferred tool for anyone who wants to present their journeys, expeditions or routes in an impressive way. Whether for personal memories, travel videos or professional documentaries - with Vasco da Gama you can create spectacular route animations that will inspire your viewers. Thanks to the intuitive user interface and powerful functions, you can visualize individual travel routes in no time at all. With just a few clicks, you can create 3D views, mark locations and even set complex waypoints. Whether on land, air or water, Vasco da Gama makes it easy to visualize your journey professionally and creatively.

While other tools are often limited to simple map animations, Vasco da Gama 18 offers unparalleled variety. From high-resolution 3D maps to a wide range of visual effects and customization options, the options are limitless. The automatic adjustment of the environment and landscape, the detailed routes and the realistic animations make Vasco da Gama the first choice for anyone who wants to show more than just a simple map. It's not just about getting from A to B, it's about bringing your travel story to life.

What makes Vasco da Gama stand out is its seamless integration into your workflow. The software offers a real-time preview that allows you to see and refine your changes immediately. Thanks to the wide range of export options, you can easily integrate your route animations into common video editing programs and process them further.

Larger GPS Database
in Vasco da Gama 18 HD Ultimate

Finer Sketching of the Land Mask and Night Lights
in Vasco da Gama 18 HD Ultimate

The GPS database contains 4,526,205 entries for major cities, towns and villages. This is more than 12 times more than Vasco da Gama 18 HDPro. The larger GPS database helps you to find any hidden place.

With the higher resolution of the land mask, you can achieve a clean separation between water and land. This is an important detail, especially in connection with the new sea waves. The night lights are now also available in a higher resolution and let the night lights appear more beautiful and more detailed.

For the mountains alone, Vasco da Gama 18 HD Ultimate has an incredible 9.985 MB of altitude data available to create detailed mountain landscapes. On the other hand, Vasco da Gama 18 HDPro only has 222 MB of height data available. With more details in your route animations, you'll impress your viewers.

Route animation: Crossing the Alps

Route animation: Sailing tour

New: Individual presets made easy

With Vasco da Gama 18, you can easily save your preferred project settings as the default for all future projects. Whether it's the choice of video resolution, FPS or other project parameters - your personal presets are always just a click away. This allows you to start every new project faster and more efficiently without having to reconfigure everything.

New: Even more intuitive waypoint setting

From now on, placing waypoints is even more convenient. Even if the mouse moves slightly, the waypoint remains in the desired position. This means that small mouse movements no longer play a role when setting waypoints and you can work precisely and quickly - particularly practical for complex routes.

Route animation: On tour with the camper van

Routenanimation: Quer durch Europa

New: Extended control options

For even more efficient working, you can now use the cursor keys in pop-up windows and list views to move up and down. Press the Enter key to confirm your selection, while ESC closes the window. In addition, the Pos1 key allows you to jump directly to the first position in a list, while the End key takes you to the end. This allows you to work faster and without the mouse.

New: New map presets for seamless working

Vasco da Gama 18 now automatically selects the best available map for your projects. With an existing Internet connection, the high-resolution SatMapPro2 is used, while the tried-and-tested BlueMarble map is used offline. So you are always on the safe side when it comes to presenting your routes on a visually appealing map - whether online or offline.

Route animation: Cartoons Mediterranean voyage

New: Flexible input with convenience

To enable even more precise input, we have equipped all Wheels input buttons with an additional text field. This allows you to conveniently enter values directly via the keyboard - perfect for fine adjustments or if the mouse control is not precise enough.

New: Intelligent text management

Repeated settings for texts are a thing of the past. Vasco da Gama 18 now remembers your last used text settings and automatically applies them to new texts. This not only saves time, but also ensures that your animations remain consistent without you having to reset all the parameters each time.

Route animation: New York

Route animation: Dubai

Neu: Realistic water animations

The water surface in your animations now automatically adjusts to the zoom factor of the camera. Regardless of whether you are showing a distant scene or a close-up - the height of the waves always remains proportional to the surroundings. This makes your water animations look more realistic and better adapted to the perspective.

New: Impressive focus effects

Give your animations even more dynamics! New effects such as zoom, rotate, bounce and combinations of these make objects and text appear alive as soon as they reach a breakpoint. These effects help you to direct the focus of your viewers to important elements and make your animations even more captivating.

Camera viewpoint on the airplane

Camera viewpoint on the route line

Our latest innovation allows you to automatically direct the camera focus to the object you want. Decide for yourself whether the camera should continue to focus on the route line or now on the selected vehicle. This function gives you full control over where your viewers' attention is directed. Whether plane, car or ship - with this technology you can always keep an eye on your favorite object.

With our new function, you can choose from a selection of 150 country flags and place them as an exciting overlay on your vacation destination. The possibilities are endless and particularly impressive in combination with our beautiful fly-in/out effects. Start your journey from outer space and zoom in on the bright blue earth - highlighting your vacation country with the matching country flag. You have full control as you can set the transparency individually and fade the flags in and out depending on the camera zoom.

With Vasco da Gama 18, you can now showcase mountain landscapes even more impressively. Increase heights by up to a staggering 400% so that the contours of the mountains remain visible even from a distance, giving your travel videos an impressive plasticity. Thanks to our brand new height calculation, previous annoying gaps are a thing of the past and you can achieve impressive results in any situation.

Immerse yourself in our freshly designed layers that take city names, country borders, city lights and the land mask to a whole new level. Thin lines accentuate the country borders, while city lights shine with even more detail. We also offer two exciting variants for displaying city names. Our land mask is up to date and depending on your selection, all layers up to level 10 are available. Give your route animations that certain something with these sophisticated improvements.

If you appreciate manual camera control to keep an eye on every detail, you will no doubt be familiar with the problem of losing focus from time to time. But now there's a solution - with just one click, you can automatically guide the camera back to the action. This smart function is your secret weapon for always keeping the perfect focus point and avoiding the annoying search for it.

More flexibility with camera focal lengths: Capture all the details

Horizons for your creativity: MP4 format for limitless possibilities

We've all been there: you want to take a photo, but the camera doesn't capture the whole picture. There's not enough space to the left and right. Fortunately, there is a solution: simply switch to wide angle and see how the lost details reappear. With Vasco da Gama 18, you now have full control with a variety of different camera focal lengths that expand your creative possibilities. Especially at close range, you can integrate important details into your camera image. 

With Vasco da Gama 18, you can now create route animations in the extremely popular MP4 format. Choose between the tried-and-tested MPEG4 codec and the modern H.264 format to suit your taste. This makes integrating your travel videos into popular video editing programs easier than ever before. Easily create exciting route animations that will captivate your viewers.

With our new update, we have expanded the editor area to its full width, giving you even more room for your ideas. This allows you to edit routes and place text and objects without restrictions. No space remains unused, use the full resolution of your monitor. In the main settings, you can choose between the classic view and the full width at any time, depending on what best suits your creative workflow.

Fly In and Fly Out - Spectacular tracking shots with just one click

Land in sight - Use land masks created with Vasco StreetMaps

Before the actual travel route starts, quickly set a breathtaking tracking shot at the starting point and a monumental end credits at the end. No problem, choose with just one click from 23 fly in/fly out animations. Whether it's a spinning globe, impressive camera zooms or wacky tracking shots, every taste is catered for. The Fly In/Fly Out animations are also ideal for displaying text in the opening or closing credits.

The flat map mode has also been thought of, here you have 18 Fly In/Fly Out animations each at your disposal. 

Vasco da Gama 18 now supports importing your own land masks. You like to work with detail maps, such as city maps, and want a more precise separation between land and water for the representation of water waves. Now you can import a map for the land mask in addition to the detail map and thus display the water areas exactly without the water waves spilling over the land.

SatMapPro 2
The most beautiful satellite map of the whole world

Experience the world in a new light
Shiny Earth Maps let your route animations shine!

SatMapPro 2 is our most beautiful satellite map and shows the world as you hardly ever see it: Cloudless and clear. We have removed all disturbing factors, like clouds, condensation trails of airplanes or color distortions in an elaborate process. Unlike satellite maps from the Internet, with SatMapPro 2 you do not get a patchwork quilt, but a harmonious representation of the whole world. The SatMapPro 2 satellite map is available online free of charge until 31.12.2025, all you need is an active Internet connection. 

Experience the fascination of our Shiny Earth Maps and see for yourself - free of charge until 31.03.2025. All you need to use Shiny Earth Maps is an active internet connection. Take this opportunity and experience the fascinating world of Shiny Earth Maps - your source for breathtaking route animations with Vasco da Gama!

Discover more. Experience more. With Shiny Earth Maps.

Ready-to-use maps - now also with maps for flat map mode

Drag & drop - simply drag and drop 3D objects

With Vasco da Gama 18, in addition to the well-known world maps for the globe view, you now also get ready-made maps for the flat map mode. Get started right away and design your travel routes with our beautiful ready-to-use maps. Balanced colors and attention to detail on the essentials. 

Design the surroundings of your travel route in no time at all. With the new drag & drop mode, you simply drag the desired 3D objects onto the map. And you can do it in a jiffy, without having to switch to the object selection every time. In addition, you can conveniently adjust the size and orientation of the objects with the mouse. For example, you can create entire forest landscapes in a fraction of the time.

Clouds - individual height adjustment

Ocean waves - With many new setting options

What counts for ocean waves also applies to the clouds. Individual settings for cloud height, wind direction, wind strength and cloud type offer you a wide range of design options. Take off with the plane below the clouds, when you reach the flight altitude you break through the cloud cover and fly towards your travel destination in the bright sunshine. 

One of the great highlights of Vasco da Gama are the ocean waves. Vasco da Gama 18 now offers you many new, individual options for adapting the display. Adjust the wave height or wave direction to get the effect you want. You can also turn the reflections on the water on or off according to your personal preferences. 

Suntime - dynamic sun setting with just a few clicks

You keep every moment of the scene in view and thus enjoy working with many camera angles. With the new function for dynamic sun setting, you can only select the respective time of day at key positions; the times of day are calculated automatically for all other camera points. No more cumbersome adjustments at many camera points is required. In this way you get a spectacular course of the sun in your travel film with just a few settings.

Easy motorcycle mode - with the best position in every curve

Flight Mode - Take off, fly, land, all with one click

The popular Easy flight mode now has a counterpart. Easy motorcycle mode is intended for all motorcycle fans who enjoy an inclined position when cornering. Just one click and the motorcycle automatically leans into every curve. What fun! And of course it's also suited for bicycles. 

Create automatic takeoffs and landings for your flight, as well as all curve and tilt movements with just one click. Based on the route, the altitude is automatically calculated, and this can be easily adjusted if necessary. 

Atmosphere - Rich, beautiful colors from dawn to sunset

You can see the Earth in its most beautiful colors, especially in connection with the new BlueMarble card. The sea in fantastic blue tones, the sunset in beautiful orange tones. Experience beautiful mountain landscapes in the evenings.

As desired by many of our customers, you can now create fascinating mountain landscapes with Vasco da Gama 18. The route animation gains more depth and dynamism as your journey by plane glides over breathtaking mountain ranges.

Quick & Easy Assist - Create beautiful travel animations quickly and easily

Over the years, Vasco da Gama has been continuously optimized and expanded, so that it meanwhile a large number of features are available with Vasco da Gama 18 on your home computer.

Note: Due to the change from Vasco da Gama 18 to 64Bit older object packages are no longer supported! Customized files for Vasco da Gama 18 are provided for all current object packages. Map packages are not affected by this and can still be used.

If you like to learn more details about Vasco da Gama 18, we recommend to download the Manual in pdf format and have a look at it.

Annotation: Some images contain additional object and/or map packages or have been created with Vasco da Gama 18 HD Ultimate version of the software. These optional packages are not part of Vasco da Gama 18 HDPro or Vasco da Gama 18 HDPro XXL and can be purchased separately.