Google maps w/ satellite imagery

[Charlton Purvis]

> >So it sounds like you are generating all of the tiles statically and
> >then just serving those up via javascript?  Has anyone tried using
> >mapserver to tile on the fly, i.e. use mapserver to generate image tiles
> >at certain zoom levels based on feedback of the user searches.  Then
> >store tiles in a server cache.  When users request a map, have the
> >server check the server tile cache, before kicking off mapserver to
> >create new tiles.

Believe you me, I'd love to do this.  But what prevents me from doing this
and w/o the help of 10,000 CPUs to burn like google maps, is the fact that
my underlying data changes constantly.  I'm in the near real time ocean
observation business, and I try to cache as much as I can.  Considering
that I go out around the clock fetching and aggregating ocean
observations, an image that a user requests could be saved, yes, for
caching purposes, but once the underlying data changes, that cached image
is SOL.  The caching that I do is hourly to keep the initial maps and the
common extents performing somewhat snappily.  But these hourly caches have
to be refreshed whenever any new data comes in.

While the google maps stuff is sexy, what would really blow me away would
be a site that is that fast AND is also based on constantly changing
underlying data.

Charlton