off topic: earth.google.com

[Andy Canfield]

I wrote a simple writer the other day to translate all my companies relevant
telecom design from AutoCAD DWG's into kml format which is what
Keyhole(Google Earth) uses. The file spec is
here:http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_doc.html
It reminds me a lot of SVG without all the weird path stuff you have to deal
with in SVG. It's mostly a display format and there isn't a real good way to
store much information so that the user can access it. Basically what you
display on the screen in the form of labels or the little blurb you can put
in as a description is about it. So writing a translator isn't hard you just
bring the geometries over. Everything must be in WGS84 or it won't display
correctly. Also you will have to break your data sets up if you have large
ones because it gets really, really, really slow as it seems to have to parse
the entire xml document in order to load it. Which is weird because they
buffer the imagery as it comes in but they have to parse the entire document
before they can load the geometry rather than draw it as it parses. Double
buffering would be even better but it seems like everything in the interface
other than the Satellite imagery was put in as an after thought. I put 1,400
boundaries into it and that dataset usually takes a second or two to load
into MapInfo or ArcGIS takes 15 to 30 seconds to load into Keyhole. Just for
fun I tried loading in 650,000 polylines that are aerial data routes in an
eleven county area and that took 45 plus minutes to load on a dual Zeon
processor machine. So definitely break up your data sets and let the users
load them when they need them vice making seamless data sets. On Monday if
anyone is interested I can put up some screen shots of what a telecom(VoIP
and HSI) network loaded into Keyhole looks like.
Thanks,
Andy

On Saturday 23 July 2005 00:39, Daniele Margotti wrote:
> You said:
> 9. You can overlay data (vectors and raster) from your computer.
> 10. You can connect to web data sources (like WMS with about 10 lines of
> server-based scripting).
>
> So, how can overlay data? Can I overlay a shape file? How can I define
> colour, labels, and so on (as in a Mapserver mapfile)?
>
> And how can I connect to a web data source like WMS?
> I have a webserver with Mapserver configured for WMS/WFS requests, how
> can I tell Google Earth to connect to my Mapserver?
>
>       Daniele
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Brent Fraser
> Sent: Friday, July 22, 2005 4:58 PM
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] off topic: earth.google.com
>
>
> Flavio,
>
>   Google Earth (not to be confused with Google Maps) is more than just
> mind blowing.  In my business (Satellite imagery sales and service) it's
> world shaking.
>
> The top ten things I like about Google Earth:
>
>  1. It's free, with upgrades for a fee.
>  2. The entire world (almost) is covered with pan-sharpened Landsat (15m
> pixels).  3. All (most?, some?) of Digital Globe's Quickbird imagery is
> shown (0.6m pixels).  4. The user-interface is dead simple.  5. The
> fade-in/fade-out of vectors and annotation on zooming is great.  6. The
> performance fantastic (like streaming video).  7. It's 3d. You can tilt
> the world and fly thought canyons.  8. It's even more 3d. It will render
> 3d objects such as buildings.  9. You can overlay data (vectors and
> raster) from your computer. 10. You can connect to web data sources
> (like WMS with about 10 lines of server-based scripting).
>
> The application: http://earth.google.com (after install, do View -> Play
> Tour)
> The community: http://bbs.keyhole.com
>
>
> Brent Fraser
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Flavio Hendry" <flavio at TYDAC.CH>
> To: <MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU>
> Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 11:55 PM
> Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] off topic: earth.google.com
>
> > hi all
> >
> > as google is obviously a hot issue, have a look at
>
> http://earth.google.com/.
>
> > just mindblowing.
> >
> > Mit freundlichem Gruss / Best Regards
> > Flavio Hendry
> >
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