What this means is that it will be easier for government defense employees to explore any part of the world, or venture to any place on Earth, without leaving their computers, using software that yields flashy 3-D graphics and zoom-ins.

Autometric’s product, called the Enhanced Digital Geodata Environment (EDGE) combines imagery and mathematics to do such spy-thriller stunts as floating through a view of outer space and zooming-in to fly through the nation’s capital.

Autometric’s technology has a long history.

After Paramount Studios spun off the company in the early 1960s to focus on the entertainment business, Raytheon bought the company, rolling it into its space and information division.

By the late 1960s, Autometric was working with NASA, recommending landing sites on the moon for Apollo missions. Autometric plotted the prime spots after developing an accurate map of the heavenly body from images culled from lunar orbiting systems.

Today, news organizations have used Autometric’s EDGE to illustrate such things as a cosmic zoom-in to a bombed-out Iraqi barracks, a nuclear test site in Pakistan and a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

Animators at the major networks have been using the software, originally developed for the Department of Defense, to merge detailed black-and-white satellite photos with color background images. As a result, millions of viewers got their first look at places once off-limits to all but a handful of CIA photo analysts.

Although the majority of the company’s business is government-contract related, Autometric plans to become an "outer space to in your face" company. With its advanced graphics simulations, it will reach out to the commercial market.

"We would like to have our commercial piece grow," said Autometric chief Christopher Haakon.

Haakon said that Boeing has made it clear that it is not interested in getting involved in the commercial imaging business, selling single photos to vendors and individual customers. The market for raw images does not yet exist, he said.

"There is too much of an education process to bring along remote-sensing data," Haakon said. "There is going to be a glut of pixels from different vendors over the next two to three years."

Instead, Autometric will continue to focus on larger clients who want to use its combined technologies, such as videos to preview orbits of space-bound vehicles before a launch or animating expressions of virtual humans online.