Saturday, May 31, 2008

Prism objects for WWJ

Looking at the thematic mapping blog some time ago I saw a beautifulies KML examples of animated prism maps.
Prisms are goods to represent amounts with different shapes like countries or cylinders.

A couple of days ago I have started to work on a new renderable object Prism for WWJ, to allow WWJ community have this useful things. It is still in development but looks very well :)


Given a set of lat/lon positions you can create a prism object specifying the top elevation, color, etc.

It looks great, for to be honest has the same problem as the big brother GE has, the hole problem.

The vertex of polygon are extruded from globe surface to the specified height, but only the vertex not the polygon itself. Then, for big shapes, like China or Australia and using little heights, a hole can appear.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Google Earth Browser plugin

I was thinking about blogging not only about The Balloon Project but also about GIS things. And here is my first post.

The next links talks about the new release of the Google Earth browser plugin:
  • http://earthissquare.com/2008/05/28/google-earth-in-a-web-page/
  • http://bullsworld2007.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/another-google-idea-borrowed-from-world-wind/
  • http://maps.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/ft/?p=238

and here is a bit summary of it:
  • advantage
    • it is another product of the google universe
  • disadvantage
    • only for windows (at the moment and like the initial release of GE)
    • memory and processor eater

and finally, I would like to note this is a great new for google product fans, but Google doesn't invent nothing, WWJ and MS VE arrives first, they can be the bastards brothers but arrives first ;)