[QGIS-Developer] QgsServer and 3d tiles

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hello,

On 09/11/2017 16:49, G. Allegri wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
> I agree tiled static data can, and should, be served as static content
> but what I meant was having something like Tilestache, GeoWebCache,
> MapCache, etc.. They're meant to render and cache on the fly, or
> preseeding the tileset.
> 
> My question raised from the fact that QGIS 3D renderer could be a common
> base to produce terrain meshes (a la Cesium) and 3D tiles, both for the
> desktop 3D viewer and for a cached tileset to be served through HTTP.

I would rather have a dedicated terrain mesh generator first, which
could be embedded in QGIS 3D later on. Generating a terrain mesh is a
data processing action, not a rendering one. We should tackle the
problem in this order, or we will end up with code less efficient and
less generic.

> QgsServer could use the same code base to populate the cache, but this
> doesn't prevent having a Processing tool (ore whatever) doing the work
> in advance.

I think we agree on the general issue, but have a different point of
view on the design process. We should converge at some point :-)

> You're working with gltf. What about OGC I3S?

I3S is, like other examples, a standard pushed by ESRI for ESRI
products. It has been designed by ESRI and pushed forward to OGC
community standard in a desire not to adopt 3D tiles.
I do not say that I3S is a bad technical standard. But it is just
another effort from ESRI to favor its own specific formats instead of
collaborating on a real "community" standard.

It is therefore not a strong incentive to dedicate efforts for an
opensource implementation.
If there was funding for it, we could implement it too, as the
specifications are open. But priority goes to 3DTiles as far as we are
concerned.

Regards,
Vincent




> 
> giovanni
> 
> Il 9 nov 2017 16:29, "Vincent Picavet (ml)" <vincent.ml at oslandia.com
> <mailto:vincent.ml at oslandia.com>> ha scritto:
> 
>     Hello,
> 
>     On 03/11/2017 21:04, G. Allegri wrote:
>     > What if we had a QgsServer service dedicates to serving 3d tiles for
>     > Cesium or iTowns?
>     > Is anybody working on this?
> 
>     At Oslandia, we work on 3D topics a lot, and 3d tiles in particular. We
>     are implementing 3D Tiles support in iTowns, and several components to
>     serve this format as webservices.
> 
>     E.g. :
>     - https://github.com/Oslandia/building-server
>     <https://github.com/Oslandia/building-server>
>     - https://github.com/Oslandia/lopocs
>     <https://github.com/Oslandia/lopocs>
> 
>     I do not think having QGIS Server serving 3D tiles is a really good
>     idea.
> 
>     First, 3D tiles is a format ( and protocol) to serve tiles of objects in
>     a mostly static way. Therefore, what would be interesting is for QGIS to
>     have a way to export data as 3d Tiles. These tiles can then be served
>     with a simple HTTP server, no need for a QGIS Server component.
> 
>     Moreover, there are a lot of use cases where we want to serve 3D Tiles
>     without using QGIS at all. Component-oriented architecture is better
>     than monolithic software.
> 
>     What I see as best approach would be to mutualize as much code as
>     possible regarding 3D tiles in py3dtiles :
>     https://github.com/Oslandia/py3dtiles
>     <https://github.com/Oslandia/py3dtiles>
> 
>     Using this module, we can write a 3dtile exporter, as a Processing
>     module for example. We already have some draft code to do that for some
>     data sets.
>     Then, we could have an independant 3D tiles server reusing py3dtiles, or
>     integrate this as QGIS Server module if we want.
> 
>     We would be happy to work on these subjects and share our experience on
>     all 3D-related topics. Funding is also very welcome.
> 
>     But for now, I think we should focus on releasing QGIS3 in a usable
>     state. We have waited for too long, and there is still work to achieve
>     to stabilize the release.
> 
>     3D features can wait a bit more, even if call for interest, needs,
>     funding and collaboration is welcome.
> 
>     Best regards,
>     Vincent
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