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<DIV>Microsoft's Virtual Earth and <A href="http://maps.google.com/" target=_blank>Google Maps</A> uses a vector layer (VML or SVG) on top of their raster layer (basemap) to show driving directions.<BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif">----- Original Message ----<BR>From: Bill Thoen <bthoen@gisnet.com><BR>To: mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org<BR>Sent: Saturday, August 2, 2008 2:06:37 PM<BR>Subject: [mapserver-users] MapServer Animation Examples of Pipeline Flow?<BR><BR><FONT size=+1><FONT face=sans-serif>I've got a little project that requires an "eye-catching" display of flow through a network of gas pipelines. I'm using MapServer 5.0.3 (with AGG) on Fedora Core 9 and I want to stick with open source technology if possible.<BR><BR>Are there any examples out there of MapServer showing animation effects along a linear feature (i.e. road, river, pipeline, information flowlines, etc.) that I could look at to get some ideas?<BR><BR>The first thought I had was to move colored dots along a pipeline in the direction of flow and use a timer to pace the animation. Each dot would represent the day's load from
a source and they would move based on pipe diameter, pressure and other parameters that affect flow. This works, but the down side is that eventually you have a lot of objects to juggle and performance goes to heck.<BR><BR>Then I thought of using a series of textures for each pipeline segment and swapping them iteratively to simulate an animating. <BR><BR>What won't work is rendering the entire map image each time; that would go from eye-catching to mind-numbing pretty fast. So is there a way with MapServer to display a map base, but allow for objects to be "floated" on top in such away that I don't have to re-render the the entire map each time? (like an AJAX tool for mapserver?)<BR><BR>If anyone has any ideas or knows of examples they could point me to, I'd appreciate it.<BR><BR>- Bill Thoen<BR><BR></FONT></FONT></DIV></DIV></DIV><BR></DIV></DIV></div><br>
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