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VRML .vs. Google Earth?
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| I have a web-based GIS application that I'm now using VRML for, but I'm
thinking I should switch to Google Earth Enterprise. Any good arguments to
stick with VRML?
The latest round of VRML viewers sucks.
Octaga 1.8 is the most solid, but their navigation sucks. I've talked to
them about it, but they refuse to do any kind of non-standard navigation
like they have in BS Contact. Well, now they have some kind of experimental
"game style" navigation, but it's wild, uncontrollable.
BS Contact 6.1 and 6.2 have the best navigation, it's a beauty to use.
Navigation glides along, with the shift, alt and ctrl keys as modifiers to
mouse movement, there is no more intuitive nor more pleasurable user
interface for VRML. But something they did to the latest version breaks with
my VRML files that worked with the previous versions. I get all this white
screen crap, and then it finally bombs.
Parallelgraphics Cortona 4.2 has the worst navigation. It just doesn't work
with my VRML, something about the scaling I think, and it isn't as fast as
Contact, so why bother?
So what is the state of 3D on the web today? Is there something else besides
VRML/X3D that's poised to take over and unify displaying 3D on the web? I'm
only interested in GIS applications, for example using 5 meter elevation
data with 1 meter orthophotos to give a realistic preview of places on the
Earth. Is there going to be anything better than Google Earth for this?
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| Dale ha scritto:
[...]
Actually i'm using Cortona VRML viewer, but i use an external 3d
pointing device for navigation: my application is a classical win32 app
(no web interface) so there's no particulary issues about that and I can
use Cortona Interface SDK to interact with the user's viewpoint position...
[...]
> I'm only interested in GIS applications, for example using 5 meter elevation
> data with 1 meter orthophotos to give a realistic preview of places on the
> Earth. Is there going to be anything better than Google Earth for this?
Uh...that's interesting: how can you obtain so detailed data for the
earth elevetion model ?
I've been looking around for a while, and i was only able to find 1km
DEM files...can you pls give me an hint ? :)
Ah, btw: i'm looking for europe zone...thank you!
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| for 90m elevation data--worldwide--go to
http://seamless.usgs.gov/
and click on the "view and download international data" and you'll find
90m SRTM data. it's awes.
the 5m stuff the guy above spoke of is for select areas- cities or
counties maybe, probably not regional, certainly not global.
john
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| "bboy" <thisisantispambboy@uk2.net> wrote in message
news:42dcf488_1@x-privat.org...
> Dale ha scritto:
> [...]
> Actually i'm using Cortona VRML viewer, but i use an external 3d
> pointing device for navigation: my application is a classical win32 app
> (no web interface) so there's no particulary issues about that and I can
> use Cortona Interface SDK to interact with the user's viewpoint
position...
I wonder if I could write some kind of script that would give me the kind of
navigation I want?
> [...]
elevation[color=darkred]
the[color=darkred]
>
> Uh...that's interesting: how can you obtain so detailed data for the
> earth elevetion model ?
> I've been looking around for a while, and i was only able to find 1km
> DEM files...can you pls give me an hint ? :)
> Ah, btw: i'm looking for europe zone...thank you!
John responded about the SRTM 90 meter data for Europe. According to this
link
http://www.geoplace.com/onlineexclu...globaldata.asp, 30 meter data will
be available outside the US, but only to scientists on a case by case basis.
Most of the US is now covered by 10 meter DEMs, but there's a company called
Intermap that has a goal of mapping the whole Earth at 5 meters using IFSAR
technology. So far, they haven't covered much of the US, just California and
some other areas here and there. But they have covered the British Isles,
Indonesia, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu entirely. They
are pretty much contract driven at this point, so it's first paid, first
served. They'll be doing some southwestern US states next.
http://www.intermap.com/index.cfm
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| Viveka 2005-07-20, 11:30 pm |
| On 2005-07-19 15:58:10 +1000, "Dale" <dmgreer@nspm.airmail.net> said:
> I have a web-based GIS application that I'm now using VRML for, but I'm
> thinking I should switch to Google Earth Enterprise. Any good arguments to
> stick with VRML?
>
> The latest round of VRML viewers sucks.
This has been a major issue for us as well. We have an Open Source VRML
3D Earth at
http://www.planet-earth.org
It's a massive multi-resolution LOD tree; as you zoom in you get more
terrain and texture detail. Where we have the data, it can look quite
beautiful:
http://www.planet-earth.org/screenshots/mountains.jpg
more old screenshots at http://www.planet-earth.org/screenshots/
My colleague Chris Thorne has written a terrain processing tooll that
will slice and dice just about anything into progressively-loading VRML:
http://www.surak.com.au/~chris/vrml/RezIndex.html
source and binaries at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/planet-earth/
We have a small company that's doing quite well working on these technologies -
http://www.ping.com.au
But why am I showing you screenshots? Because if you go to
http://www.planet-earth.org and fly around our VRML model yourself,
you'll get lost.
You'll flip upside down. Depending on what VRML viewer you're using,
the earth will either rotate smoothly in space or careen wildly around
your screen like a demented whelk.
We've only just managed to get the thing to work in any browser other
than BS Contact; this is because all other browsers try to load the
entire scene graph into RAM rather than just the part of the LOD tree
that has been triggered. Our world is too big to fit into RAM, so those
browsers will crash. We eventually got around that by coding our own
LOD proto that works the way we want, kind of, in most browsers,
usually.
There are also precision issues, which would take too long to describe
in this mail. Suffice to say that if you want to visit a point on the
earth, you'll need to teleport there (transforming the world around
you) using our drop-down menu, instead of smoothly flying down.
The kicker though is just 3D navigation. As Dale points out, the
standard VRML "walk, fly, examine" navigation is insufficient. Games
have shown us a range of far superior navigation techniques, mostly
based around constraints. Altitude-constrained flight is one; you need
to be able to pick an altitude and then fly around laterally. Looking
down in this mode should not make you fly into the ground. This is how
aeroplane pilots fly, and it's how flight is handled in most games.
Humans live in 3D space, but we move in two dimensions. VRML 3D
movement is too hard for anyone not trained as an astronaut or fighter
pilot. Target-lock (sometimes combined with altitude constraint) is
another method of constraining flight that I've seen used to good
effect in games.
There are many other problems with VRML navigation. You can try to
script around them, but you're entering a browser compatibility
minefield. You end up choosing a single browser, and then you're no
better off than someone using a proprietary 3D system.
> BS Contact 6.1 and 6.2 have the best navigation, it's a beauty to use.
> Navigation glides along, with the shift, alt and ctrl keys as modifiers to
> mouse movement, there is no more intuitive nor more pleasurable user
> interface for VRML. But something they did to the latest version breaks with
> my VRML files that worked with the previous versions. I get all this white
> screen crap, and then it finally bombs.
This is our problem too. We've become too reliant on BS Contact,
because they have the most usable browser. Hence our attempt to code up
our own cross browser progressive LOD. But this is not the answer in
the long term.
> So what is the state of 3D on the web today? Is there something else besides
> VRML/X3D that's poised to take over and unify displaying 3D on the web? I'm
> only interested in GIS applications, for example using 5 meter elevation
> data with 1 meter orthophotos to give a realistic preview of places on the
> Earth. Is there going to be anything better than Google Earth for this?
OK, here's where I start into the answer. Yes, we can do better than
Google Earth.
Right now, planet-earth.org using VRML can do many things that Google
Earth can't. We can deliver detailed cities, building interiors,
avatars. We have a database-driven publishing engine. You can create an
object and place it into the world, complete with metadata, from within
the 3D space. You can run dynamic queries on the objects in the world.
You can set up a server with a detailed version of a city and
transclude it into the Earth.
However this is all moot, because although I can do a great demo and
show off all these features, they are completely unusable by mortal
humans; mainly because it's too hard to just move around our Earth. So
how do we fix this? We can't rely on the proprietary browser companies.
This is where X3D comes in. Not as a technology, but as an attitude.
I've seen how the developers of the X3D browsers work together; after
the fiasco with the VRML browser vendors it's a thing of beauty. One
of them will propose an extension and implement it quietly. The others
will then comment on the proposal, make their own implementations, and
try hard to get them in sync. They'll have heated, open technical
arguments about the best way to do it; they'll work something out that
everyone can live with; they'll tweak their implementations again; then
they propose it as an extension to the W3DC. It works. The X3D Shaders
proposal is really really nice.
Now we need to do the same thing for navigation. We need to put
together some good proposals on how to bring X3D navigation into the
21st century.
I have some old notes specific to Earth navigation here:
http://old.ping.com.au/3map/interac...navigation.html
The process of getting improvements into the browser is driven by
resources. We can propose all we like, but someone needs to do the
coding. Anyone with Java chops can dive in to Xj3D, it's open source
after all. Or there's always money. In a big enough project, the price
of paying Mediamachines to extend Flux or Yumetech to extend Xj3D can
be less than a license for a proprietary browser, and meet your
requirements more precisely. This is the route that Ping is taking. We
have some biggish consulting projects coming up, and will be putting
budget towards extending the browsers. If you have good ideas on how
VRML/X3D navigation should be extended, then let me know and we'll put
it in.
planet-earth is Open Source as well, and I haven't done enough to bring
people outside Ping into the project. If you're interested in using or
contributing to planet-earth, let me know and I'll do my best to smooth
your path. We'll be at SIGGRAPH in LA in a week (not on the show floor,
but at the conference) if anyone wants to chat.
Finally, there's no reason to look at Google Earth as a competitor to
VRML. They can complement each other. Google/Keyhole are publishing
their data format, which bears some relationship to OGC (Open
Geospatial Consortium) standards; it makes sense to be interoperable.
Regards,
V.
--
Viveka Weiley,
Design Director, Ping
http://www.ping.com.au
| |
| Andrea 2005-07-21, 7:32 pm |
|
Viveka ha scritto:
> On 2005-07-19 15:58:10 +1000, "Dale" <dmgreer@nspm.airmail.net> said:
>
>
> This has been a major issue for us as well. We have an Open Source VRML
> 3D Earth at
> http://www.planet-earth.org
> It's a massive multi-resolution LOD tree; as you zoom in you get more
> terrain and texture detail. Where we have the data, it can look quite
> beautiful:
> http://www.planet-earth.org/screenshots/mountains.jpg
> more old screenshots at http://www.planet-earth.org/screenshots/
>
> My colleague Chris Thorne has written a terrain processing tooll that
> will slice and dice just about anything into progressively-loading VRML:
> http://www.surak.com.au/~chris/vrml/RezIndex.html
> source and binaries at:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/planet-earth/
>
> We have a small company that's doing quite well working on these technologies -
> http://www.ping.com.au
>
> But why am I showing you screenshots? Because if you go to
> http://www.planet-earth.org and fly around our VRML model yourself,
> you'll get lost.
> You'll flip upside down. Depending on what VRML viewer you're using,
> the earth will either rotate smoothly in space or careen wildly around
> your screen like a demented whelk.
>
> We've only just managed to get the thing to work in any browser other
> than BS Contact; this is because all other browsers try to load the
> entire scene graph into RAM rather than just the part of the LOD tree
> that has been triggered. Our world is too big to fit into RAM, so those
> browsers will crash. We eventually got around that by coding our own
> LOD proto that works the way we want, kind of, in most browsers,
> usually.
>
> There are also precision issues, which would take too long to describe
> in this mail. Suffice to say that if you want to visit a point on the
> earth, you'll need to teleport there (transforming the world around
> you) using our drop-down menu, instead of smoothly flying down.
>
> The kicker though is just 3D navigation. As Dale points out, the
> standard VRML "walk, fly, examine" navigation is insufficient. Games
> have shown us a range of far superior navigation techniques, mostly
> based around constraints. Altitude-constrained flight is one; you need
> to be able to pick an altitude and then fly around laterally. Looking
> down in this mode should not make you fly into the ground. This is how
> aeroplane pilots fly, and it's how flight is handled in most games.
> Humans live in 3D space, but we move in two dimensions. VRML 3D
> movement is too hard for anyone not trained as an astronaut or fighter
> pilot. Target-lock (sometimes combined with altitude constraint) is
> another method of constraining flight that I've seen used to good
> effect in games.
>
> There are many other problems with VRML navigation. You can try to
> script around them, but you're entering a browser compatibility
> minefield. You end up choosing a single browser, and then you're no
> better off than someone using a proprietary 3D system.
>
>
> This is our problem too. We've become too reliant on BS Contact,
> because they have the most usable browser. Hence our attempt to code up
> our own cross browser progressive LOD. But this is not the answer in
> the long term.
>
>
> OK, here's where I start into the answer. Yes, we can do better than
> Google Earth.
>
> Right now, planet-earth.org using VRML can do many things that Google
> Earth can't. We can deliver detailed cities, building interiors,
> avatars. We have a database-driven publishing engine. You can create an
> object and place it into the world, complete with metadata, from within
> the 3D space. You can run dynamic queries on the objects in the world.
> You can set up a server with a detailed version of a city and
> transclude it into the Earth.
>
> However this is all moot, because although I can do a great demo and
> show off all these features, they are completely unusable by mortal
> humans; mainly because it's too hard to just move around our Earth. So
> how do we fix this? We can't rely on the proprietary browser companies.
>
> This is where X3D comes in. Not as a technology, but as an attitude.
> I've seen how the developers of the X3D browsers work together; after
> the fiasco with the VRML browser vendors it's a thing of beauty. One
> of them will propose an extension and implement it quietly. The others
> will then comment on the proposal, make their own implementations, and
> try hard to get them in sync. They'll have heated, open technical
> arguments about the best way to do it; they'll work something out that
> everyone can live with; they'll tweak their implementations again; then
> they propose it as an extension to the W3DC. It works. The X3D Shaders
> proposal is really really nice.
>
> Now we need to do the same thing for navigation. We need to put
> together some good proposals on how to bring X3D navigation into the
> 21st century.
> I have some old notes specific to Earth navigation here:
> http://old.ping.com.au/3map/interac...navigation.html
>
> The process of getting improvements into the browser is driven by
> resources. We can propose all we like, but someone needs to do the
> coding. Anyone with Java chops can dive in to Xj3D, it's open source
> after all. Or there's always money. In a big enough project, the price
> of paying Mediamachines to extend Flux or Yumetech to extend Xj3D can
> be less than a license for a proprietary browser, and meet your
> requirements more precisely. This is the route that Ping is taking. We
> have some biggish consulting projects coming up, and will be putting
> budget towards extending the browsers. If you have good ideas on how
> VRML/X3D navigation should be extended, then let me know and we'll put
> it in.
>
> planet-earth is Open Source as well, and I haven't done enough to bring
> people outside Ping into the project. If you're interested in using or
> contributing to planet-earth, let me know and I'll do my best to smooth
> your path. We'll be at SIGGRAPH in LA in a week (not on the show floor,
> but at the conference) if anyone wants to chat.
>
> Finally, there's no reason to look at Google Earth as a competitor to
> VRML. They can complement each other. Google/Keyhole are publishing
> their data format, which bears some relationship to OGC (Open
> Geospatial Consortium) standards; it makes sense to be interoperable.
>
> Regards,
>
> V.
> --
> Viveka Weiley,
> Design Director, Ping
> http://www.ping.com.au
| |
| Andrea 2005-07-21, 7:32 pm |
|
Dale ha scritto:
> I have a web-based GIS application that I'm now using VRML for, but I'm
> thinking I should switch to Google Earth Enterprise. Any good arguments to
> stick with VRML?
>
> The latest round of VRML viewers sucks.
>
> Octaga 1.8 is the most solid, but their navigation sucks. I've talked to
> them about it, but they refuse to do any kind of non-standard navigation
> like they have in BS Contact. Well, now they have some kind of experimental
> "game style" navigation, but it's wild, uncontrollable.
>
> BS Contact 6.1 and 6.2 have the best navigation, it's a beauty to use.
> Navigation glides along, with the shift, alt and ctrl keys as modifiers to
> mouse movement, there is no more intuitive nor more pleasurable user
> interface for VRML. But something they did to the latest version breaks with
> my VRML files that worked with the previous versions. I get all this white
> screen crap, and then it finally bombs.
>
> Parallelgraphics Cortona 4.2 has the worst navigation. It just doesn't work
> with my VRML, something about the scaling I think, and it isn't as fast as
> Contact, so why bother?
>
> So what is the state of 3D on the web today? Is there something else besides
> VRML/X3D that's poised to take over and unify displaying 3D on the web? I'm
> only interested in GIS applications, for example using 5 meter elevation
> data with 1 meter orthophotos to give a realistic preview of places on the
> Earth. Is there going to be anything better than Google Earth for this?
| |
| Andrea 2005-07-21, 7:32 pm |
| For the moment this is the best result that I was able to obtain using
VRML to show large GIS data:
www.italyexplorer.it
| |
|
| "Andrea" <caporin@infinito.it> wrote in message
news:1121967726.850920.207200@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> For the moment this is the best result that I was able to obtain using
> VRML to show large GIS data:
> www.italyexplorer.it
That's pretty snazzy! I looked at it in BS Contact, and it was okay, kind of
pokey and quirky though.
But then I looked at Italy in Google Earth. It's so much faster and easier
to use. And it has all those layers, with stuff like borders, buildings,
roads, railroads, restaurants, etc. Navigation and LOD handling are far
superior to anything else, and one of the coolest things is that if you
nudge it, you just keep flying.
| |
| Andrea 2005-07-28, 7:32 pm |
| It can be, but you should also compare a budget such to zero, as mine,
with what can allow Google, you do not seem of duty to consider this
little detail?
| |
| Heiko Recktenwald 2005-08-15, 7:58 pm |
| Andrea wrote:
> It can be, but you should also compare a budget such to zero, as mine,
> with what can allow Google, you do not seem of duty to consider this
> little detail?
>
I am not used to my plugin or the site was somehow closed, but what I
saw, the silhuette of the alps as some sort of a label, was good.
Driving car highway near Milano, you have it 200 or 300 km long in 100
km distance or so, incredible.
H.
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