ArcGIS Explorer is a free 3D viewer by ESRI.  Time Navigator extends ArcGIS Explorer by allow users to playback of historic data.

Time Navigator can animate any ESRI Shapefile with point geometry and a timestamp field.  The timestamp fields can be date, numeric or textual. Time Navigator is developed as a custom task for ArcGIS Explorer build 410 and can be downloaded from downloaded from ArcScripts (source code is included).

Below is a brief video demonstrating showing Time Navigator animating and comparing Atlantic hurricanes from 1971 and 1981.