May 10, 2008
As YouTube doesn’t support decent resolutions yet here are some links to higher resolution/better quality versions of some of my clips, be warned some are big others are huge, they are in either xvid , QT MP4(h.264) or wmv so you may need to install some codecs, enjoy.
May 10, 2008
I think this is the first time I have made a World Wind Java video clip, but expect more as it is finally starting to impress me, the music in the clip is actually by World Wind Java developer Patrick Murris (a man of many skills).
The video was a direct capture from the applet running on the Cascade Volcanoes Tour Applet page, the page is fairly simple (screenshot below), but shows the power of the SDK.
The applet starts with a standard Earth Globe then zooms in to the Cascades region, clicking on each vol canoe’s name in the list smoothly moves the camera to its location, and of course you can freely drag the camera around, zoom and tilt like in any other virtual globe. In my opinion this would be a great addition to many wikipedia pages, and could be used on many educational websites to easily give them a ‘wow’ factor and grab the attention of today’s children.
May 9, 2008
Patrick Murris has posted a ppt of the slides used at Javaone to the world Wind forums, check them out here.
May 8, 2008
Well it looks like slashgeo beat Chad and me to the scoop with details of World Wind at Javaone, so pop over and read the story, if NASA give us any further information we will pass it on.
I was going to post some screenshots from knowledge planet but the ap just crashes my firefox.
May 3, 2008
I was going to post this video on Earth Day, but I got too stressed trying to add audio to the mp4 with Quicktime, so I decided I’d use good old XVID instead and upload it today.
One thing I’ve noticed recently is YouTube only takes a few minutes to process a clip once it has been uploaded, as oppossed to an hour or so like it used too, all my recent clips have been HD so try the YouTube HD hack and see if it works.
May 1, 2008
Ok so Google Ocean isn’t out yet but EarthBrowser 3.0 is, good luck fighting the big boys Matt, hopefully being flash based it will find a niche.
Anyway on to Google Ocean, the video above is obviously from WorldWind, we have had bathymetry for a couple of years and have lots of NOAA data add-ons, which you can find here, we also had a direct link to a NOAA WMS provding lots of Ocean data, this seems to have gone and we no longer have such a close relationship since Google started wooing them. The main thing I see Google needing to add for Ocean’s is negative elevation support, I’m kind of surprised they haven’t already done this as it affects locations like the Dead Sea (see images below) and Death valley too, if we can do it with a few developers and no budget I’m sure they can.
April 21, 2008
Well I have been missing all the fun by being ill again it seems, I was looking forward to bashing GE as usual, especially after reading Chad’s review Non-Google Fanboy Look at Google Earth 4.3, I was actually surprised though, I kind of like the new style and features.
Chad is right GE is and always will be the AOL of the GIS world, it is aimed at the general public, and unlike WorldWind and other open source virtual globes, it’s main reason for existing is to make Google richer, this is why there are so many annoying layers on by default and for the prominence of the business search. Before people start complaining and pointing out that Google has great educational layers and brings attention to current political crises, yes it does and I applaud them for that, but where are the links to the kml’s so other software can spread the word too? If Google really want to help they need to share and not lock up this information, yes all the other GIS teams could approach the companies and organisations Google get their data from, but why would they devote resources (which may be limited) to giving out the data again? It is already in GE, lets not go into the other reasons for not sharing such as pressure from Google, as it will just start a flamewar.
Back to 4.3, I love the smooth sun shading startup, the control widgets look much cooler than the old ones, and are easy to use. They finally added sun shading (only a year or so after WorldWind first got it), and I’m pretty impressed, it isn’t as control able as WorldWind’s, but its very pretty and if I had a dev free with some directx skills I’d get ours tweaked a bit, our GPU sun rendering is pretty poor, and although CPU rendering is very nice, it could also do with improvements such as colour shading the terrain dynamically.
All in all a nice update, but I won’t say any more as I feel dirty, and almost sound like a fanboy, darn you Google!
April 13, 2008
I am pretty impressed with the new features of VE, I’m not going to list it all, the geo blogs have all pretty much covered everything.
I, like many users am not happy that we now get redirected to multimap.com, but it isn’t hard to get round, just use http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us
My favourite additions are the new higher res 3D buildings and the ability to record a true HD movie clip, here is a clip I made of Vegas
It is a simple process, add some push pins (make sure you are logged in, or the video option won’t be there), save the collection, go to settings and set your resolution, now open your collection, select actions and ‘Tour & make videos in 3D’ then hit record. It can take a while and don’t try to multitask it eats up all your RAM and CPU cycles, my 3GHz dual core was hitting 100% on both cores at times, I also had it fail to save a recording on one occasion because it ran out of memory, but it didn’t crash and gave a nice error dialog box instead, rather refreshing from a Microsoft product. If you want more control over your movie you can hover over each pushpin and edit its ‘3D tour’ properties.
Overall it will give most users the ability to make movies easily, personally I would like more control over the camera, I couldn’t get it to fly up a street, it always zooms out and then back in, the ability to draw a flightpath would be nice, also it only saves in wmv, I prefer raw avi, so some file type options would also be good.
For more information on the updates check out Steve Lombardi’s blog.
For the original un-youtubed wmv file click here.
Oh and don’t forget the clip is copyright MSFT.
April 8, 2008
I’m not sure if this link will work from outside the UK, it shows a short clip of Earth’s highest clouds, captured by a NASA Spacecraft, BBC page.
Noctilucent, or “night-shining”, clouds appear as thin bands in twilight skies, some 80km (50miles) above the surface.
The AIM probe has now returned the first truly global pictures of these phenomena which appear to be increasing in frequency and extent.
Scientists say their observations show how the clouds alter rapidly, hour by hour and day by day.
They hope their studies will reveal the key triggers to the clouds’ formation and why these triggers appear to be undergoing long-term change.
It’s great to see the beeb using WorldWind, hopefully more broadcasters follow.
April 5, 2008
From the GEO-JOBE blog it seems Google is being sued for invasion of privacy
The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled “Private Road,” and that violated their privacy.
“There’s no merit to this action,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said. “It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern because we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.”
So it is ok for Google to invade privacy because you can search through all their data and report any problems yourself, and at their discretion they will remove it. I’m sorry but personally I do not believe the public should have to prove all data posted by big companies is or isn’t invading privacy, the company should prove all data is legal before releasing it. I’m used to my privacy being invaded and abused by my government, not happy of course, but private companies doing this is just not acceptable.
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