It's conceived to be easily usable "in the field" according to an observing session needs, but also to study "at home" the Moon and its relief. It's interfaced with "Sky Charts" freeware (above). This set is certainly now one of the most complete released.

It's possible to choose the language used by the software and database.

Files have been cut in several packages.

New features introduced in version 2 included :
- Introduction of "Moon complete globe" with Far Side;
- Simulation of a spatial flight orbiting the Moon;
- VMA is now separated in 3 modular versions;
-- AVL "Light”: 2D software for less performing hardware;
-- AVL "Basic”: Basic software presenting the "3D with librations" mode;
-- AVL "Expert”: Advanced software presenting the "3D complete globe" mode;
- New texture of complete globe realized with Clementine high resolution photos by professor Mark S. Robinson and his team of the "Northwestern University";
- More than 600 new Far Side craters and formations descriptions;
- Database corrections for some bad entries;
- New pictures library: "Moon Stars" 130 LOPAM pictures of the most famous lunar formations

News functions introduced with 2.1 included :
- Computerized goto mount support;
- Moon phase calendar.

Sky Charts (a.k.a. Cartes du Ciel) computes and prints customized charts of the heavens. When you download the program ("basic package") it comes with the Bright Star Catalogue (featuring stars down to mag. 6.5) and a database of 10'000 nebulae from SAC 7.2. Optionally, you may choose to download the "complete package", including also Sky2000, version 3, with 300' 000 stars to magnitude 9, high precision planetary satellites positions and Realsky support.

Anyway, the point is for you to later get additional free catalogues from its homepage, according to your interests and specific needs. For instance, Tycho-2 with more than 3 millions stars, down to mag. 12.1; a catalogue of 68'179 variable stars from GCVS, NSV and EVS; a database of 193'898 galaxies from PGC1999 catalogue etc, etc...

Main features offered include:

• about 30 catalogues of stars, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies;
• ability of demanding portions of star catalogues online so as to plot charts until mag. 20;
• facility of self-updating online, from different sources, the comet and asteroid elements databases;
• option to request from SkyView - Digital Sky Survey, and similar sources, real sky images of the region drawn on the chart - with the ability of superimposing and easily editing, filtering and chromatically juggling them;
• DDE interface allowing the joint use with VAROBS - another freeware by Patrick Chevalley, consecrated to variable stars;
• interface for telescope control;
• additional support of Real Sky and USNO Cds etc, etc...

It includes catalogues allowing you to draw individual charts for all constellations (North and South Hemispheres, amounting to 92 charts); 40 generic charts covering all of the sky and seven «special topics» charts (the Pleiads, open clusters on the Milky Way etc...).

About NASA´s Blue Marble Data: using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet.

Much of the information came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite.

The current version of BMV uses 5 levels of detail ranging from a virtual image of 2560 x 1280 pixels (level 0) to 40960 x 20480 pixels (level 4).

The Windows installation includes two cumulative packages. The first package (about 32 MB) installs the run-time software, some auxiliary data, and levels 0-2 of the base imagery. The second package installs levels 3 and 4 of the base imagery and is (about 260 MB in size).