[GRASS-user] NEWBIE: Time required to develop Google Earth-like GIS App??

GRASS GRASS user
,
1

Hi,

I am evaluating alternative GIS tools for a research project. The starting
point for
our research requires a Google Earth like interface - pan, tilt, zoom on
raster images,
annotation creation, and data layers.

From looking thru the website it is difficult to immediately tell if all of

this is available
with GRASS "out of the box" -- with or without using NVIS or QGIS.

Beyond this, a secondary capability I am looking for is a 4D feature,
allowing the user
to move a time slider (or hit a "play" button) to view raster imagery (and
annotations)
collected over time. I have used KML/Google Earth to do this at least with
annotations,
and it seems to work well -- that said, Google Earth is not an open
system.

Any information or guidance would be most appreciated.

Paul

2

Consider these three applications:
-http://ossim.org - has a package called ossimPlanet (aka osgPlanet)
-http://punt.sourceforge.net/new_svn/index.html or its relative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind
-http://vterrain.org/Implementation/index.html - for more 'local' scenes, not full global apps.

Hope those tips help,
Tyler

----- Original Message -----
From: pnpazand@rockwellcollins.com
Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:32 am
Subject: [GRASS-user] NEWBIE: Time required to develop Google Earth-like GIS App??

Hi,

I am evaluating alternative GIS tools for a research project. The
startingpoint for
our research requires a Google Earth like interface - pan, tilt,
zoom on
raster images,
annotation creation, and data layers.

>From looking thru the website it is difficult to immediately tell
if all of
this is available
with GRASS "out of the box" -- with or without using NVIS or QGIS.

Beyond this, a secondary capability I am looking for is a 4D feature,
allowing the user
to move a time slider (or hit a "play" button) to view raster
imagery (and
annotations)
collected over time. I have used KML/Google Earth to do this at
least with
annotations,
and it seems to work well -- that said, Google Earth is not an open
system.

Any information or guidance would be most appreciated.

Paul

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3

I am evaluating alternative GIS tools for a research project. The
starting point for our research requires a Google Earth like interface
- pan, tilt, zoom on raster images, annotation creation, and data
layers.

GRASS's NVIZ is fine for this. If you want the raster flat, no
z-component for elevation, create a new constant surface and use your
raster for the "color" attribute. It is nice to use a real elevation
raster though, but again you can drape your raster over it with the
color attribute in NVIZ's raster panel. e.g. drape LANDSAT over a SRTM
elevation layer. (r.in.wms, r.in.onearth [from the wiki addons])

Also you can export with r.out.vtk and friends to many other
visualization softwares like Paraview or use r.out.v5d for Vis5D.

The VisIt software was mentioned the other day, it should be able to
read GRASS maps directly via GDAL. http://www.llnl.gov/visit/

From looking thru the website it is difficult to immediately tell if
all of this is available with GRASS "out of the box" -- with or
without using NVIS or QGIS.

NVIZ is "out of the box" with GRASS for the most part.

-download grass & the spearfish sample data set.
-start it up.
-g.region rast=elevation.10m
-nviz elevation.10m

and you're away. Very easy to get started.

QGIS is strictly 2D only, AFAIK.

Beyond this, a secondary capability I am looking for is a 4D feature,
allowing the user to move a time slider (or hit a "play" button) to
view raster imagery (and annotations) collected over time.

Yes, NVIZ does nice keyframe animations and can export directly to MPEG.

have a look at the example on the Keyframe animator help page:
http://grass.ibiblio.org/grass63/manuals/html63_user/nviz/nviz_toc.html

I have used KML/Google Earth to do this at least with annotations, and
it seems to work well -- that said, Google Earth is not an open
system. Any information or guidance would be most appreciated.

annotations are harder, but possible. That is something which exists but
has some rough edges in NVIZ. Mostly through lack of testers I think.
(Simple site markers are fine, I'm talking about north arrows, scale
bars, and text labels)

Hamish