Civil War buffs will soon be able to tour Pennsylvania's Civil War battlefields via Google Earth. The State of Pennsylvania hopes the virtual tourists will then be inspired to visit these scenes in reality.

The state is giving $285,000 to Google Earth, Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office and the National Civil War Museum to develop software that will display and promote Pennsylvania's Civil War trails. (The technology could potentially be used for other Pennsylvania sites as well.) Users will be able to see a panoramic view along a trail, zoom in to read the inscription on a monument, or go back in time to witness the change of seasons on a historic battlefield.

The technology funded by the state grant is called Gigapan, short for Gigapixel Panoramas. It combines thousands of digital images to create a panoramic image with more than a billion pixels. When the panoramic images are combined with time-lapse, users can explore the space through time as well.