[GRASS5] re: Grass GUI

[Michael Barton]

Syd,

I think your comments about visualization and 3D are right on the money.
AFAICT, GRASS is far ahead of the rest of the pack of GIS, in terms of its
abilities to work with true 3D (NVIZ has had some major improvements in the
last couple months, so you should take a look at it again.) We could (and
should) capitalize on that. I also agree with your comments about hardware
and looking to the future. The only caveat is that GRASS is important
globally, where hardware varies considerably.

Michael
__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton



> From: Syd Visser <sydv at sjgeophysics.com>
> Organization: SJ Geophysics Ltd.
> Reply-To: <sydv at sjgeophysics.com>
> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:30:18 -0800
> To: <grass5 at grass.itc.it>
> Subject: [GRASS5] re: Grass GUI
> 
> Grass is one of the few GIS systems that is 3D not only 3D raster but
> also 3D vector yet almost all of the interfaces being discussed or
> available such as Qgis, Thuban, Openve, Udig etc appear to be totally 2D
> (some people like to think 2.5D is 3D). The only one that is actually 3D
> is NVIZ and the last time tried to use it it was very good at 2.5D but
> the 3D part was lacking.
> 
> Although a display is not really a part of a true GIS it is likely the
> most important part of a GIS in our line of work (geophysics). We have
> to be able to display our end product graphically to the client and
> almost all of our work is now in 3D since as a geophysicist we usually
> try and determine what is below the ground.
> 
> We are now using Paraview (paraview.org)and Mayavi
> (mayavi.sourgeforge.net) for our display and again moving away from
> grass. Both of these programs are based on the VTK graphics libraries.
> We are also looking at TVTK from enthough
> (https://www.enthought.com/enthought/wiki/TVTK) mabey a Python wrapper
> for grass using packages such as these. This could also greatly extend
> the scientific part of grass.
> 
> 
> So my main points are
> 
> 1) Why is a 3D GIS even looking at 2D graphics (usually 3D packages can
> aslo do 2D or it can easily be added)
> 
>    2.
> 
>       There are 3D graphics libraries available like VTK, OpenDX can
>       they not be used. What does NVIZ use is it totally based on OpenGL?
> 
>    3.
> 
>       A GUI appears to me to be jest a wrapper around good libraries so
>       is what GUI to use that important with the exception that it
>       should be myltiplatform.?
> 
> To me a big mistake I often see programmers make is they write software
> to work with todays or even yesterdays hardware/software. Remember you
> will never get your software working till tomorrows hardware is available.
> 
> In other words, unless there is something new out there, i do not see
> how to do 3D graphics without OpenGL. I have not seen a graphics card
> for years that does not a support it. Even most cheap cards with onboard
> video support OpenGL now.
> 
> The people at Grass are doing a great job and it has a real unique
> chance to get ahead of most major GIS systems think 3D all of the way
> don't stop half way. I think Nviz is doing a great job but we can do our
> work in linux which I prefer but we require a viewer on the windows
> platforms sorry but that is where our clients are.
> 
> Most of our clients do no care how we get there they only want a pretty
> picture or now 3D movie of the end product. So without good graphics and
> a GUI grass will forever linger in academia well mabey that is what the
> majority of people want?
> 
> 
> Syd
> 
> -- 
> ///////////////////////////////
> Syd Visser P.Geo
> SJ Geophysics Ltd.
> sydv at sjgeophysics.com
> www.sjgeophysics.com
> 
>