Mubarmij asks:
"A lot of people, including the ex-Vice President, think that Terrain Visualization and the Georeferencing of all kinds of data is the next big thing. Given the broad applications (sims, education, games, GIS, virtual
tourism, etc) that can be derived from such technology, I would tend to agree that if this is not actually the NBG(tm), then at least it is very close. Like the internet, this technology has taken its time in obtaining it's current level of sophistication. However,
there is huge potential here that has yet to be tapped, despite the fact that it currently fills a huge niche market. I had once read that NASA spends more than 70%
of its resources on space imaging and visualization-related activities (unfortunately I link to the article that mentions this, but one should remember that the major goal of all space satellites is to take multihued pictures of Earth and other planets, and you will see that this is not an exaggeration), which is quite a
lot of money." Open Source has provided several frameworks for GIS from which a "killer app" may spring from. Read more on the various Open Source projects on GIS, and feel free to share your thoughts on where this technology may head in the future.
"There are quite a few web sites, commercial and non
commercial that tend to this technology. However, it seems like the early nineties, where people are just starting to get aware of the internet, but are still awaiting for the killer app to make this thing fly.
There are two open source projects I am aware of that deal
with this area. The first, VTP, is a
real open source project attempting to create a real terrain visualizer. The
second, OpenSkies, is not really open source yet (despite its claim)... but it is interesting in that it allows networked people to fly or drive through virtual worlds that are reality based.
Here are a few other questions:
- Do you think that this technology will remain a niche market (albeit a big one)? If so, is this likely to occur?
- Are you aware of any open source projects other than the two mentioned above that deal with this area?"
Interested readers will also want to check out Drawmap and the longstanding Open Source GIS, GRASS.
GIS will be VERY big... (Score:1)
Visual simulation "portal" (Score:1)
Looks cool. (Score:2)
Source Download Is Here [vterrain.org]
I'll tell you if I can build it.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Heh. (Score:2)
Perhaps in the future you might consider using a robots.txt file to help restrict this as well?
Since it doesn't look like I'll be able to build this on Linux easily, you won't have to worry about my copy of the source.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:GIS is nice, but a little high end (Score:2)
No, but you can start with US Census TIGER data, and work with dozens of other sources of free data.
I'm currently doing a program that generates databases for a free palm pilot flight planning program called CoPilot [xcski.com]. Getting the data and writing scripts to import it is the hard part, in part because new data comes out every 28 days. The only problem I have right now is that the FAA "order form" for digital data doesn't have any feedback, so two weeks after you filled in the form and you still don't see any data, you don't know if that's because they didn't get the order, or they're just really slow processing orders, or they are waiting until the next data update cycle. So I have some older less complete data from another source for now, but I think I know where to get the latest and best data cheap.
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:3)
GeoVision's product is still around, after going through a series of owners. It's still a damn good GIS. And it would probably be dead easy to port it to Linux now, since Oracle is on Linux. Heck, I think even Oracle MultiDimension, a product I worked on at Oracle, is available for Linux.
An Application for managing maps (Score:1)
The application is currently under heavy development but most of the features for maintaining a database of maps exist. The application can be had from CVS at sourceforge.
OpenGIS (Score:2)
--
Re:MapServer is good (Score:1)
This is based on the claims on their web page, I (coincidentally) just found it the day before I read this and haven't had a chance to download an play with it. The ability to talk to SDE could be hugely significant for the projects I am involved with.
Re:I use GIS data (Score:1)
MapServer is good (Score:1)
NBG? (Score:2)
Or was that supposed to be NBT (Next Big Thing)?
ESRI is in bed with Microsoft (Score:1)
Re:What about imagination? (Score:3)
Human beings are pattern recognizers. Our hardware is wired best to look/listen/feel/taste and match that stimulus to some other previously established pattern. We put a lot of effort into data visualization because it is easier for us to look at a picture and create a pattern than to look at raw data and create a pattern. Even the most difficult mathematical phenomena (noncommutative groups) make better sense when you give someone a concrete or highly visual example (rubik's cube, arrangements of books, etc.)
Sometimes the most brilliant of mathematical work comes from building a simple model that greatly simplifies the work (think Feynmann diagrams).
This can even apply to theology: when God intersects in our lives, we try to create a pattern to explain what God is, even though God is unfathomable. And thus we end up with many people who end up believing in Jesus or Allah or Nirvana, and then some people who end up believing in the UFO behind the comet. This also uncovers the problem with pattern matching: sometimes the patterns we find are dead fucking wrong (Aristotle). Fortunately we also have scientific method and reason to weed out self-contradicting, nonsensical, or otherwise false patterns.
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Re:What about imagination? (Score:2)
You made a Hell of an interesting point. Exactly a Hell of it. As there is a WHOLE set of testimonies of visions of Hell. And a few ones of Heaven. Now wouldn't be interesting to MODEL them? Maybe they would help some people to see what is waiting them.... And help morale 'round here on Earth.
Anyway that's not for me. I, like every old Hacker who lived the end of the XXth century, will go to Heaven...
"Ok my son, you are in Heaven, what do you wish?"
"Infinite munition/all weapons... God Mode... and send me to HELL!!!!"
Re:Take GIS hype with a pinch of Salt (Score:1)
The maps the GIS people produced were supposed to replace the old ones eventually, but had lots of problems. For one example: on their screens, they used lots of colors and even printed them in color, but when copied they looked really bad and light colors disappeared.
Also, the only access to the GIS was in their office, and they were the only ones allowed to use it. They had some gee-whiz demos, but nothing very useful. That was just my first exposure to GIS though, about 7 years ago.
I think the situation has improved since then, especially since many GIS products can use a web browser as the client. There are many opportunities for open source/free software to commoditize the GIS backend & use web browsers as the frontend.
Now I've gone back to school for civil engineering, and I'm thinking of building a GIS for some municipality as my senior project, using all open source tools.
Re:It's the DATA, stupid. (Score:1)
Re:Opengis.org (NOT) (Score:1)
Re:There's also Openmap (and VisAD!) (Score:1)
This one is more raster-based (e.g. topo and satellite data) rather than vector-based. But nonetheless, quite impressive software.
Re:Opengis.org (end run) (Score:1)
Now indeed, various groups/individuals have been attempting to implement these OpenGIS standards as best they can given what is available. You might have a look at:
geotools [sourceforge.net]
OGR Simple Feature Library [velocet.ca]
While not OpenSource, the following is an interesting implementation of an OpenGIS compatible map server:
DEMIS World Map Server [demis.nl]
(This OGC Web Map Server spec can be found at: 00-028.pdf [opengis.org])
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
An "industry standard" perhaps - as ESRI controls 60-80% of the GIS market (depending upon what segment you look at). Secondly, a shapefile is not the standard way in which Arc/Info stores its data - these binary formats (e.g., the "e00" files) are entirely proprietary. There have been some attempts to try and reverse engineer this format - use google to look up "e00 format".
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
Re:It's the DATA, stupid. (Score:2)
GIS and data visualization (Score:2)
Re:Opengis.org (Score:1)
However, even where not widely implement as defined in the specification, early efforts like "OpenGIS Simple Features" have had a broad influence on the industry.
Furthermore, recent ESRI offerings (ArcGIS 8.1) includes support for the Simple Features OLEDB interface, and AutoCAD MapGuide supports SF OLEDB as a data source.
I have made extensive use of the OGC "Well Known Text" format for defining coordinate systems, and have also implement some simple features work as shown at:
http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/opengis/ [velocet.ca]
The CAVOR Project (Score:2)
This is primarily the engine for a GIS, the database, graphics display, user interface, scripting, etc, that developers or end-users can further tailor to their specific application. The same engine can be used for other applications that include both a spatial/graphic part and a database part (eg CAD, UML diagrams, PERT charts, etc).
It's still in development -- the display list manager is working (and used in a spin-off, 'cvv'), the database interface and scripting language is in progress.
The architecture is based loosely on GeoVision/SHL/AutoDesk's high end "VISION*" system. (In its time -- before bankruptcy and transfer of the technology to SHL then AutoDesk -- GeoVision pioneered several of the technolgies widely used in GIS systems today, such as storing the spatial data in a relational database.)
The home page is at http://www.cavor.org although I'm not sure the server is up to a slashdot effect.
Re:It's the DATA, stupid. (Score:2)
Yep, and it used to be that that data was very expensive -- involving lots of hand labor digitizing maps and aerial photos. That's still true to a certain extent, but much less so.
I've gone from one elegant-but-buggy GIS product (VISION*) to just doing "GIS" by connecting my CAD maps (Microstation) to databases,
I'm curious as to when you were using VISION* and it what context. It's been nearly a decade since my involvement with it (I did a lot of the requirements analysis and design for 2.0 -> 2.1).
And connecting CAD to a database is a nightmare -- I was once involved in converting a hybrid AutoCAD+dBase system to VISION*'s forerunner. Yuck!
Oh, and PS, that bodes ill for Open Source GIS software outside the academic world, because big organizations have a positive fondness for the "Microsofts" of any industry they buy from, and an aversion to "unsupported" products.
Sure, that's AutoDesk (who currently own VISION*) isn't going to be worried about CAVOR [sourceforge.net]. Were I major telco or power company or large regional government I'd go with them for the support, training, handholding, etc. (Heck, when I was with GeoVision we wouldn't talk to anyone with less than a quarter million to spend).
But there's still a niche for open source GIS. Heck, look at the "travel map" software out there -- that's a rather simplistic GIS, to be sure, but it shares common elements. Think of what, say, real estate agents could do with a GIS system.
And beyond that, think of the other application domains that share characteristics with GIS. You mention trying to tie a CAD system and a DB together. How about a CAD system with a built-in DB interface? Or any number of other applications that have both a spatial or graphical aspect and a database aspect -- software diagramming tools (UML, other CASE tools), project management (PERT charts), various sorts of CAD, and so on. (This is part of what the CAVOR project is all about -- I always felt that GeoVision never quite understood the potential of their technology. I once prototyped a CASE tool (DFD's, ERD's and the like) on VISION* in about a day.)
Give folks a free toolkit like that and the uses and applications will come, and they won't all (by a long shot) require gigabytes of data. It's when the tool cost is high that it's only used by those with a lot of data to manage.
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
Take a look at Cavor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cavor/). It isn't exactly VISION*, but the overall architecture is similar and that's my model (as much as I can remember, anyway).
Cheers,
-- Alastair
(Another ex-GeoVisioner -- and yes, the architecture beat heck out of what ESRI was peddling back then. I haven't been close enough to it lately to know about now.)
Arrrggghhh ... Visualisation is *NOT* pictures (Score:4)
As for the field of displaying quantitative information, the recommended books are Tufte [yale.edu]. It is actually quite hard to create intuitively understood data visualisations because our eye-brain can only measure simple things like intensity, distance, etc. That's why things like pie charts where the angle is directly proportional to the propoertion works. All the other data visualisation techniques (parallel coordinates, tensors, etc) require a fair amount of training and patterning before you can pick up the meaning. A geologist (or related discpline) would be able to look at a contour map and be able to "see" in eir mind's eye the slope and elevation. Lesser mortals would probably require a pan of a 3D VRML model and even then have difficulty in recalling specific features. Adding extra layers or texture maps might be aesthetically pleasing (cough*QUAKE*cough) but doesn't really add any extra information.
LL
There's also Openmap (Score:4)
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
Really, I wish the GRASS project were moving faster (or moving at all). It was well positioned some years ago, but hast lost badly to ESRI in the past year or two.
Re:Take GIS hype with a pinch of Salt (Score:1)
Re:GIS is nice, but a little high end (Score:1)
Re:GIS is nice, but a little high end (Score:1)
There is also an open routeplanner [sourceforge.net] project.
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
The grandparent post makes no sense, how is using computers to visualize terabytes of data "cheating" or somehow being "Un-Jesus like"?
and why jesus figures into a conversation about GIS is way beyond me...
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
Please don't consider this as troll, I just consider the question asked to slashdot very interesting,can we please stick to just "Open Source GIS" ? please don't bring vaporous philosophical noise.
Re:What about imagination? (Score:3)
Re:What about imagination? (Score:2)
And you really don't have to bring your religon into things to make a point...
Re:OpenGIS (Score:1)
Re:Take GIS hype with a pinch of Salt (Score:1)
7 years ago? Yes, things have changed.
I think the situation has improved since then, especially since many GIS products can use a web browser as the client. There are many opportunities for open source/free software to commoditize the GIS backend & use web browsers as the frontend.
Sure! The problem is that there STILL isn't a really good GIS system for the internet. GIS is dynamic, not static. Half the solutions are based on server side scripting which requires a new download for every view change, addition of layer, etc. The client-based controls/plugins aren't that great either. Most of them just use the same mechanism that the server-side stuff uses. Painfully slow.
The only solution that I have seen that has some REAL promise is a guy at Montgomery Watson who has created flash-based GIS systems. Data is dynamically downloaded. Just don't expect to see it on store shelves anytime soon. :(
Nooo!!! ESRI==M$ (Score:1)
There are far better people to be courting, people who are actually doing more than lip service to OpenGIS standards (AFAIK ArcIMS *still* doesn't do OGC compliant queries and Geography Network looks like their own duplicated "standard" for the same funtionality).
And let's not start on the Shape file format, that thing is an abomination compared to GML and should not become a defacto standard a spatial data format.
Xix.
P.S. WTF was this posted over Easter when I was away from net access??? Will anyone actually read a
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
Also consider that for every analytic definitin or theorm there exists a geometrical interpretation. These geometric interpretations aren't proof-elements, but they *are* comphrehension elements. I would suggest that historical the geometric interpretations have lead to the abstractions. To suggest that abstraction transcends geometry is true. It also trancends understanding.
"The proof works".
"What does it prove?"
"I don't know, but every statement is a true statement and it procedes from our axioms to the collection of symbols we were shooting for!"
"So it doesn't really mean anything?"
"We trancended meaning last semester."
World Construction Set -- [not open source] (Score:1)
Sounds like something you might have a use for. We're not Open Source (and we would be starving and the product wouldn't exist, if it were
Distributed Data Collection (Score:1)
So how do you get a lot of data quickly and cheaply? It's another case for the cornucopia of the commons - distributed data collection.
Just as Napster turned the net into the celestial jukebox, and SETI at home harvested the
computer power of the net, how could we turn
everyone into Geographical data collectors?
Two devices that could play a part : (Global or equivalent) positioning in mobile phones. And digital cameras.
People are scared of being tracked by the position of their mobile, but anonymous tracking could be really useful. Think of the number of people who walk down the same streets. Drive down the same highways. Now imagine that the company who ran the mobile phones, also recorded the trajectories, of the phones, averaged and picked out the trends. What you'd end up with is a pretty accurate map of most of the heavily used roads and pedestrian walks within big cities, plus the major highways, outside.
Now imagine putting position recording into
other devices. Digital cameras which position and orientation stamp every picture they took, but also perhaps, make an estimate of their height when the picture is taken. When you upload your images to myPhoto.com, behind the scenes, the elevation of these points is being captured.
The key here is anonymity. No one wants their
devices tracking them if it tracks them personally. But the chips which do the data capture in the device can be open designed, so any expert can check that they aren't storing a unique ID number; and signed so that you can test
that the chip in your device is legit (and not a government spook chip)
phil
Re:Opengis.org (Score:1)
At least in this subcommittee, the intent is a consistent handling of transforms, something missing in the industry save among academics and folks like the National Geodetic Survey, where doing it "right" is more important than having a new "tool" to do it differently.
Further, the publication of GML-1 and the current efforts to make GML-2 a standard are significant events in facilitating datasharing. Real significant.
No, they're not dedicated to developing open source software. But the idea is open data standards so data can be distributed amongst the various packages represented, and some of the governmental agencies represented DO have open source in mind for their apps.
--gerry
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:1)
GIS is nice, but a little high end (Score:2)
What I would like to see is somebody making an application like Delorme's AAA MapNGo or Microsoft's Streets and Trips available.
However, those sorts of programs are difficult to do under the Free Software model. The code isn't hard (no harder than a browser or game engine) but the program is worthless without data. And, unlike a program which you can stay in your little room and write, data requires you to have detailed maps of street locations and interconnections, locations of attractions, hotels, restaurants, and gas stations. You cannot just sit in your room and hack those out.
Now, if we could just persuade Delorme that the Free Software community is a good market...
It's the DATA, stupid. (Score:2)
GIS just involves a lot of data - and a lot of problems cross-referencing separate but related datasets. In our case, its the (say) water, sewer, parks, roads and legal maps (and 22 others) that are all drafted separately but must register on top of one another correctly to create synergy.
I've gone from one elegant-but-buggy GIS product (VISION*) to just doing "GIS" by connecting my CAD maps (Microstation) to databases, to a second run at GIS with the Microsoft of the GIS world (ESRI). And they were right; the technology was never my big problem. Staying on top of the ever-mutating dataset is 98% of the work.
I see GIS having big effects in the government and industrial world but almost none at the consumer level, because you have to be a big organization to manage enough *data* to need a GIS to understand it all.
There will be consumer products and services - your PDA will show you the direction to the nearest Thai restaurant - but the only technology you'll need to get this from some remote GIS engine will be a browser.
Oh, and PS, that bodes ill for Open Source GIS software outside the academic world, because big organizations have a positive fondness for the "Microsofts" of any industry they buy from, and an aversion to "unsupported" products. Hate to be the messenger, but its just a corporate-culture fact of life.
Re:Remember "Earth" from SnowCrash? (Score:1)
I'm the instigator of the planet-earth [planet-earth.org] project. I'm a mere interface designer myself, but we do have real hackers involved as well. We have a CVS running at sourceforge, and are starting to document our architecture. More info is, of course, at the website [planet-earth.org].
The main insight driving our project is derived from the data-is-difficult problem noted in another thread. We distribute the data-collection tsk among all our users. This is, of course, the only approach known to scale. Everyone knows a little about their local area. Handheld GPS units are becoming widespread, which makes things even easier. The readings from these things are superseding survey data these days.
Even if you don't know your lat/long, you can still contribute to the planet-earth database: it's an immersive 3D navigable representation, with landmarks, waypoints etc. - so just zoom around until you find your house, and attach some metadata to it - This is My House! or This is My Local Cafe and it has Very Good Coffee but lousy service. If there's no geometry there, then upload a VRML file, or choose from the library of available archetypes.
You don't have to navigate it in 3D if you don't want to; data is separated from representation, in other words, we do XML.
We allow multiple conflicting data and geometry at the same point in geospace/time, no problem - it's up to the user's filter set to decide which version to display, based on their preferences. Dynamic filter queries, good stuff.
There's plenty more to this, of course. Ask me in this thread, or email (address at the website).
V.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
geovrml is the basis of planet-earth (Score:1)
planet-earth [planet-earth.org] uses GeoVRML [geovrml.org] as the basis for our main data representation. See the thread around 4 below entitled Remember 'Earth' from SnowCrash? for more info; you may have to reduce your threshold to see it, it's currently rated (Score:2, Insightful).
Note that there's an open source GeoVRML implementation, and planet-earth itself is GPL.
[ hypermedia | virtual worlds | human interface | truth | beauty ]
eParka.com and GIS (Score:1)
-Moondog
Oh! That GIS (Score:2)
GenesisII - Open Source (Score:1)
Landscape Visualization has been the next big thing on and off for about 10 years now. I still think we're about 2 chip generations behind it being for real, plus a *lot* or work needs doing on basic 'real world' algorithms.
VTK (Score:2)
http://www.kitware.com/, yes its' open source.
VTK has been used in a lot of data viz.
I did get around to using in my project because
it *seems* (could just be my lack of expereience) more difficult to visualize dyanmic data, and things like VAS are more suitable.
But it's a really nice piece of software (wrapped in many languages including python!)
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:1)
Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:4)
Remember "Earth" from SnowCrash? (Score:2)
Anyone remember the "Earth" application from Snowcrash (Neal Stephenson)? That seems to be the ideal point towards which all of this is evolving.. check out the Planet-Earth [planet-earth.org] project which is directly inspired by Snowcrash as well as H2G2 [h2g2.com] and Everything2. [everything2.com]
Cool... (Score:1)
check out vrmls extension geovrml (Score:2)
http://www.ai.sri.com/geovrml/
very cool!
the http://www.parallelgraphics.com
cortona vrml plugin has support for it too
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:1)
ArcSDE sits on top of an RDBMS and adds spatial datatypes (and rules... unlike Oracle Spatial) to your data.
But I agree, it would be nice to get more.
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:2)
What do you mean by "owns the deafult standard?"
The ESRI shapefile technical description is available here [esri.com].
That should tell you everything you need...
Re:There's also Openmap (Score:1)
Interoperable Mapping and open source URLs (Score:1)
http://freegis.org/
http://opensourcegis.org/
http://www.opengis.org/
Interoperable Webmapping
80% of the cost of mapping projects is finding basemaps and integrating with them. There are huge amounts of GIS data around, and being able to store current versions of all the GIS data you require is often unobtainable.
Consequently the Open GIS Consortium are developing where data custodians look after the data, and serve it to the web, then application builders access these data layers (from multiple servers) merge them then present them to a user.
This is all being made possible by the development of standards for a series of Network Addressable Services.
Cameron Shorter - Web Mapping Manager
Social Change Online http://webmap.socialchange.net.au
I use GIS data (Score:2)
Re:Help me ask ESRI to port GIS products for Linux (Score:1)
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ [umn.edu]
Excellent program!
Open Source and general thoughts (Score:1)
That all being said, is GIS the future? For the web, I don't think it is. Maybe the distant future. I mean the concept is good. Put in your address, get a map, turn on layers of data to see the things you want to see. But when you actually try doing something like this you find out it is really hard. I work with an organization which has some GIS data. The data is not real clean - getting good clean data with well-built shape files is hard. Most of the data they have is point source data - really ideally suited to having some static maps drawn up. Instead this coming Tuesday I have a meeting with my boss and others because there is a huge push in my company to do a full-blown web/GIS front-end for every bit of data in the house. It's nuts! ...But I tell you, nothing sells to suites better than those dopey zoomable-layered maps. I can show her simple text query forms that return text data and a map at the end all day long, she couldn't care in the least. I tell you what at an ESRI demo her eyes lite right up! She has no concept of the idea we as a company are years and million$ away from having enough good, correct data to do GIS right. Getting good data is very hard. Storing, organizing, moving around, making available to employees, good data is also very hard. GIS chews up megabytes of storage almost as good as video production! :-)
Does the public want some graphic map they have to figure out, click on multiple times and zoom around in just to find out there are three toxic waste dumps within ten miles of their house? Really, I think the public wants a list. A list is easy to understand, it is not critically dependent on having a perfect set of UTMs and perfect GIS data and it doesn't use multi-hundred meg shape files so queries that produce lists seem much faster.
Who knows, maybe someday we will all have really big pipes coming into our houses and thanks to Mr. Moore, servers will be even faster and maybe GIS will be a practical front end to a data heavy web site. I just don't think that time has come yet - and won't for a while.
Re:Opengis.org (Score:1)
Opengis.org (Score:2)
Opengis.org [opengis.org] is the best organizational reference for open GIS standards. They have an international consortium of business and government agencies behind them. They have been around since 1993 and have developed several standards for developing a true open framework for GIS delivery. In fact, GIS is one of the rare applications that demands a very open approach since having geographic data is only useful as it relates to other geographic data.
Opengis.org has done a good job of specing out systems that are truly interoperable because they achieve GIS nirvana: seperating content from visualization. Reading GIS content from multiple servers and displaying it through a single user interface is the heart of open GIS. Amazingly, no major commercial vendors (ESRI, Bentley) are aggressively pursuing this vision. IMHO, this is an opportunity for the open source community to make a mark on a major emerging industry! If you are interested in working on developing an open source version of the server spec that Opengis has released, please contact me!
Encapsulation is the key to GIS (Score:1)
Re:GRASStep as opensource port of GRASS GIS (Score:1)
I'm working on this project too (albiet slowly) and the primary problem of 99% of GIS software is it's only good for visualization, not print media. GRASStep will support WYSIWYG printing with small print files.
There is also talk on the Quesa project about creating a PDF renderer plug-in which would also serve this purpose for 3D stuff.
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
www.freegis.org (Score:1)
Soon Come (Score:1)
Flightgear? (Score:1)
Take GIS hype with a pinch of Salt (Score:4)
The reason, is simple.
Most beginning projects focus on the purchase of GIS software, like ESRI's ArcInfo, the purchase of sexy machines to run it, and perhaps some initial staffing to set it up. They almost uniformly massively underestimate the amount of time and money required to actually get a functional landbase into the system, attach data to it, and ensure the necessary level of accuracy of the basemaps.
"It'll be easy, we have DB2 running on an as/400 and lots of maps" - should qualify as one of the most expensive single instances of "famous last words" in computer history.
In reality, very few maps are accurately digitized. Most GIS systems get sold on the premise of scanning and vectorizing dead-tree bluelines, or other formats - from paper. the problem is, that geographic maps are finicky about scale, and the maps you *thought* were accurate inevitably need to be rectified to whatever coordinate system you chose for the system. Its a tedious and enormously time-consuming process that simply doesn't lend itself to any sort of automatic processing. Then, there's the problem that most maps simply aren't accurate to begin with, and you see the beginnings of a problem. "I just bought half a million dollars of GIS software and equipment, and now I discover it's going to cost me three or four million to get my maps in shape to actually be useful".
Picture your average City government. Municipalities are where government really is. About 90% of the civil services provided to you by the sum of all government influence on you, comes from the local level. Cities have huge quantities of maps for things like building plats, subdivision maps, building blueprints, deed records, thoroughfare maps, land-use plans, etc etc etc. And that, coincidentally is where GIS appears to be the most useful. managing all that data is hard for cities - and GIS certainly looks easy in the presentations companies and consultants present - just point and click! What could be easier?
But the numbers of abandoned systems started by cities who bought into these sales pitches are huge - on the order of billions of dollars worth.
GIS companies and consultants know this - yet never warn purchasers, that in most cases, the cost of the software and systems amounts to only a tiny fraction of the actual costs of developing a working GIS.
So when you hear all the gushing success stories, and gee-whiz ideas presented as though GIS was a wonder cure for all sorts of problems, try to bear in mind - GIS works best with single-source maps, and data which can easily be applied to pre-existing points. If you hear the words "scan" or "address-range" - you'll know a bullshit artist is at work. Because for every working system involving simple maps with pre-rectified sources, there are probably 15 that were simply abandoned because of enormous unexpected costs and (salesman provoked) unrealistic expectations. A lot of money has been pissed away on GIS over the years. Real computer professionals know the golden rule - flashy graphics doesn't equal useful purpose.
Re:I use GIS data (Score:1)
Re:OK, I'm visualizing the worst "Ask Slashdot" ev (Score:1)
Re:VTK (Score:1)
I spent some time playing with the TCL/TK side of it, and it was great for quickly trying out ideas.
Another package that comes to mind is VIS5D.
See Somewhere here [kachinatech.com]
Data Visualization Products (Score:3)
The other cool thing about it is the protocols and data formats it uses to transfer information in both it's 2D and 3D mode are publically available. The idea is in the same way Palms are popular because anyone can develop for them, that's the goal with this product.
In fact, the 3D client is Open Source!
I hope this might be some where close to the kind of tool you're looking for.
antarctican at trams dot ca
GRASStep as opensource port of GRASS GIS (Score:2)
I also have some slick cartograms [unl.edu], which make even boring economic/demographic data seem cool.
andy a.
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
WTF is wrong with the mods these days? For crying out loud...
Ok now, listen. Use some Christian Humility and consider the notion that perhaps you're the one who's missing something. Ever since Archimedes, Leonardo, Newton, and Einstein, scientists and techies have been using pictures to understand and communicate ideas and further their thinking. Whether they do it on parchment or on a computer is irrelevent. Your "problem" does not exist : pictures and imagination go hand in hand.
I think you are confusing mysticism with an altogether different brand of thinking.
Re:Looks cool. (Score:1)
Use the proper page [vterrain.org] to request a VTP distribution.
Thanks,
Ben Discoe
Project Manager, VTP
Re:"Screw Al Gore" George Bush (Score:1)
If Dubya has half a clue, he should be just as enthusiastic as Gore about virtual terrain.
-Ben
Re:Cool... (Score:2)
DEMster? Yes, well, here are the possibilities: Global Data Sharing/Referencing [vterrain.org]
Actually Napster would a great analogy to follow, most of the terrain data in the world is proprietary and expensive, tightly controlled by the governments and big companies that produce it. Not that i'm suggesting anything , but P2P would be interesting way around that situation. The data only has to leak once for the genie to get out of the bottle..
-Ben>
But.... (Score:1)
What about imagination? (Score:1)
When Einstein developed his theories of relativity, he did so by using his mind to visualise data.
By doing this he was forced to understand the data. The dificulty was the aid.
Although it is difficult for many of us to see things, such as The Lord, the fact is that after some proper imagination and hard work, anything is possible.
The problem with society today is that we expect things to be too easy. Things should be hard. When Jesus went into the wilderness, he did it without oxygen tanks, PDA's and GPS devices and thermos flasks. He wore only a robe.
We should have a similar attitude. We may have to bear the pricks and cuts of hardship in doing so, but it is better to wear a Crwon of Thorns than one of gold.
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
Re:What about imagination? (Score:1)
Of course, what I said above isn't original at all. Huxley, Orwell, Chomsky, adbusters.com, etc. will all regurgitate the same thing. But at least in the days before TV and computers, people had to form their own visualization of what they read in books and heard on the radio...
You finding Ling-Ling's head?
Someone come into yard, kill dog.
ESRI, OpenMap, GRASS, TIGER, and Mapping (Score:1)
I've spent the last year developing a high volume web-based map server using Open Source tools. Note that the emphasis of this project has been vector based data (streets, rivers, shorelines, etc.), not image or raster data, so this skews my views somewhat. Sorry for the length of this post, but this really only scratches the surface of this topic.
The two best free tools I found for manipulating map data and producing maps are GRASS (www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/ [uni-hannover.de]) and OpenMap (openmap.bbn.com [bbn.com]). GRASS certainly wins hands-down for its ability to read various file formats (including ESRI Shape Files and E00 Files), but its interface is somewhat ... odd ... and
I've found it very buggy when dealing with vector products.
OpenMap is a very nice Java application and library that
can do some very slick graphics and handle many
different projections. However, because it is written in Java,
it's ability to scale to the level that I needed (random
access street level maps being produced in several seconds)
is practically non-existant. Nevertheless,
if you are looking for a "higher level" of mapping tool,
OpenMap is probably the tool you are looking for.
I've also looked (somewhat superficially) at the major commercial mapping programs, produced by ESRI (www.ersi.com [esri.com]) and MapInfo (www.mapinfo.com [mapinfo.com]). At prices starting at around $25000 and rapidly going up, you'll certainly need a lot of money to get into this game.
On the data side, there's a lot of data available on the net, some of it very good, and some not so good. Finding it is tricky, but it can be done. The "Digital Chart of the World" (DCW) is available from (HREF) and provides vector outlines for all the countries in the world (circa the early '90s). Its North American utility is somewhat limited, as the lat/lon points used in the vector outlines are based on NAD27, rather than the more popular NAD83 datum. The TIGER Line Files (HREF) is an excellent source of street level data (and state and county outlines, and much more) for the United States and various territories. Once the format of this data is understood, it's fairly easy to convert the data to a more usable format. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of the tools out there on the net for working with this data.
There's very little free street level data available outside the United States. This is an area crying out for an Open database, as the non-free data sources are really expensive and generally involve nasty royalities.
I have been working on a the Onamap.com project for the last year. The primary purpose of Onamap is to provide a "where is it" tool for the Internet in which anyone can enter location data, commentary, etc.. The components of this project are:
- a common text-based file format for vector data;
- tools for converting TIGER, ESRI Shape Files, and DCW to this common format;
- the location web server, written using Apache, mod_python, and MySQL; and
- a high volume map server, written using Apache, jserv, Java, and C++.
The map server is fairly new technology, and the components written in Java (mainly the rendering engine utilizing Java2D) need to be rewritten in something more efficient. If you want to see samples of the maps that this engine can produce, go to http://www.onamap.com/sample [onamap.com].
The plan is to release this software to the public (down to the source level) in the next few months, after the code is cleaned up, debugged and documented. If anyone is interested in this project, please feel free to mail me at dpjanes@sympatico.ca [mailto].
P2P Spatial Data (Score:1)
Re:Open Source and general thoughts (Score:1)
Isn't that a lot of what this industry is about. Why did we go from mainframe to windows - so we could point and click and scroll and look at nice graphics. I'm not so sure the public really wants a list. The challenge will be in designing a map centric site that is intuitively navigable and provides all the information needed. Oh yeah, and they will want to add their own data to it without knowing how, just push a button and whalla, instant map (I guess that's where web agents will come in). Even though a list would give them the same information.