14 replies to this topic

[snowgage]

I saw this neat little map feature on the NY Times website.

http://www.nytimes.c...ml?ref=olympics

What would it be like to create something like this? Assuming I have all the necessary pieces of base data, what sorts of applications might I need to put something like this together?

thanks in advance...

-josh

[dsl]

That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing it.

I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing they used something like Papervision 3D to create the interactive 3D bits. Continuing with that guess, they probably created a mesh with their terrain data and used the satellite image as a texture.

The other option, is they have some proprietary Flash extensions to create these. It sounds like the NYTimes graphics department has some top notch developers working for them, so it wouldn't surprise me.

Cheers,
David

[David Medeiros]

Thats is very cool indeed. I'd be curious to know more about how it's created as well.

[bjMustapha]

Thats is very cool indeed. I'd be curious to know more about how it's created as well.

it's very coool, i am curious too!

[dsl]

I couldn't resist giving this a shot. Here is a rough version of the NYTimes interactive. It might take a few seconds to load, because I'm using a rather large image overlay, and my host is a bit slow. You can click on it and drag it to rotate around. Like I said it is rough, but should be helpful in getting you started, so don't expect a duplicate of what the NYTimes did.

Basic workflow:
Download SRTM and Landsat 7 data using Global Mapper. Export terrain data as a DXF 3D face file. Export image as a jpg.

Import terrain data into Google Sketchup, smooth it, and apply jpg as a texture. Export this to a google earth KMZ file. Unzip the file to get the Collada (*.dae) file out and texture.

Use Flash papervision to parse Collada File.

You can download a FlashDevelop Project that I created here, and a more detailed explanation here.

Cheers,
David

[Jimbo]

That's cool but deadly inaccurate with the snow. For those of you unaware rain & very mild temperatures are forcast through out the duration of the games, before you know it could potentially be so Spring like some events maybe at risk.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Thanks for the explanation, David. Ah, yet another thing I'd like to try out... as if that list isn't long enough yet...

[snowgage]

Excellent thread going here.. Thanks for all the great information.. I am going to toy around a bit and see what I can come up with.

cheers,

josh

[CHART]

Here is the note at the bottom of the page...

Sources: Elevation data by Intermap Technologies Inc.; satellite photographs by DigitalGlobe, Province of British Columbia and TerraMetrics via Google Earth

[Matthew Hampton]

That's a great workflow David!

I was thinking it was developed along the lines of 3d Nature's NatureView Express, however that solution requires a client.

To borrow a phrase from years ago - way cool!

[Hans van der Maarel]

I was thinking it was developed along the lines of 3d Nature's NatureView Express, however that solution requires a client.

Just thinking out loud here, you could go from WCS/VNS to VRML through SceneExpress.

[dsl]

Thanks for the feedback. It probably could be turned into something simple where all you need to do is add a model.

Snowgage, your username reminded me of some very similar I saw a while back on ski.com. http://www.ski.com/i...ctive/maps.aspx They are really nice looking, but take a while to load. I don't know much about how they were done, other than the big Java logo on loadup.

Cheers,
David

[EOSGIS]

Hello,
Very interesting link. Well, I have been a "bad boy" and looked the code in the flash file, so I found with what program it was made:
http://www.away3d.com/
it's free, and has interface for flah & java.
I will take sometime to investigate it and see how we can use it with DEM & GIS data...
I will try to maintain you all informed
Best regards,
Fernando

[MapMedia]

well done Fernando! I am a student of flash and have tried decompiling some of NYT's flash items - can be instructional.

Away3D looks SUPER FUN!

[dsl]

Looks like Away3D is based on Papervision 3D, so in theory you could do the same thing that I did. Get the terrain data into a collada format and display it. However, I'm not saying that's the best way to do it.

Please post here if you find other methods.

Cheers,
David