[GRASS5] re: Grass GUI

[Syd Visser]

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

-- 
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Syd Visser P.Geo
SJ Geophysics Ltd.
sydv at sjgeophysics.com
www.sjgeophysics.com