How to start an embedded kml tour? - html

This is my first post, wooohooo! I've been using stack exchange when I needed information but usually someone had the same problem as me and I didn't need to make a post. Which means this website is really good.
Now turns out I have a pretty unique problem.
Please check out http://gaia.tru.ca/birdMOVES/
You will see a website with a google map. It is connected to a db which will be automatically updated.
The purpose of this website is to track how birds feed. There is going to be bird feeders equipped with NFC all over the world to track birds equipped with RFID when they feed.
I am taking care of the front-end, the web app for visualizing.
This is a work in progress so try not to care about the looks of it.
Apparently everything was written in RApache because the person who made everything this far is a Geography teacher(Not a lot of programming background, I had to refactor his code and learn R because it wasn't in my array of known languages.)
My client asked me to add time animation to his map. Feasible with the help of Google Earth.
I made the existing R code generate a tour. It works perfectly and even shows on my map.
Here is the address of my dev server: http://thelab.dyndns.org:1080/birdmoves/
You can see that there is an extra check box for time animation. If you check it, the tour will appear as an object on the map (no way to use it whatsoever right now).
So what I'd like to know is how do I make it work? How do I make it autoplay when the submit button is pressed? With standard google earth controls for rewind, pause and fast-forward. And independently from the google maps without tour?
This is intense. I have the feeling google earth isn't going to work because they deprecated all their gadgets.
I'm on the clock and I need help.

In case you were wandering what eventually happened:
We ended up making a hybrid website where the static visualization is within Google maps using kml and the time animation is within CesiumJs using CZML.
CZML is based off JSON and can be used very similarly to kml.
The api is also very nice, it only takes one line of javascript code to get a map running on an existing server.
To implement time visualization CZML supports putting multiple consecutive values for almost any property(like position, to animate movement, or even color to change colors) and takes account of time.
Also very nice, CesiumJs supports animated 3d models!
If you're interested http://cesiumjs.org/
It also has a lot of support, documentation and tutorials... etc..
It's being maintained by professionals. I really recommend it.
The Google Earth API got deprecated and will not function by December this year which is not a viable option for a long term service. So cesium was the only option for this specific project.
Cheers

Related

How would I get a Google Maps style interactive map on my game's site?

I run the RPG campaign called Yarona: Darkness Ascending. I also run the site http://diebot.org/ and I want to incorporate what's found at http://www.uesp.net/oblivion/map/obmap.shtml using my own continents, but where do I start?
Ok, I admit, Frank has a good point, I didn't consider that the external link could go offline 3 months down the road, then my question looses key information. My apologies.
What I have is a campaign that takes place on the world known as Yarona. I also have a large, world-atlas style map/graphic. what I want is to have a Google Maps style interface so my players can zoom out to continents, or zoom in as tight as city blocks, maybe even include "Special Place Pins".
Depa suggests that I try to get help from Google first. I did try that. The only thing I found was about maps of Earth, Earth and more Earth. Depa also suggested I include the code I've used so far, and I would have done so. The thing is that, to reiterate (and please forgive me if I seem flippant):
Where Do I Start?

Depth map (2d+z) algorithm or software

I'm searching for Depth map algorithm for action scrip 3 (or some other language).
My goal is to generate depth map for static image on run time.
I have fount this example http://kode80.com/2009/06/29/papervision-zbuffer-and-dof/, i didn't have the time to investigate it's code but i have the filling its working only with 3d models.
Worst viable option is server side technology that does the work.
Extended description:
I have a task to develop flash application where 3d rotation of a head is simulated by a 2d image uploaded by the user.
There are some japan guys that have managed to do that (http://hairtry.jp/), but the technology that they are using is server side. It generates swf fail with precisely coped eyes and image for the depth map of the uploaded picture. I can't find out what is the sever side technology that they are using so I'm searching for any posible workarounds.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Chavdar Slavov
your easiest solution would be to use a 3d engine, Paper vision seems to be getting out dated, theres a lot of documents on how to use, and tutorials but again not much has been happening with them lately. i suggest Away3d "www.away3d.com" they seem up to date.
for what your asking it is possible to do this 100% in flash but to create a 3d head at runtime and fill the face with hieght maps this is possible, you would need to look at bitmap manipulation.i dont think this is an easy task, what you should learn first is how to add an image to a spheric surface dynamically than look into height mapping by converting certain coulours from the image into different levels of depth i must say im sure this is advanced stuff, i manged to animate a globe that was this same method it looks dodgy but it gives you some source code in the FLA
http://www.ffiles.com/flash/animations/globe_animation_3496.html
The above link will allow you to download my source files, the animation it self is a scrolling image but i used Actionscript to give the globe depth and a sheric look

Does Google Earth or Google Maps Support Multi Touch?

Could someone give me some information about whether Google Earth or Google Maps supports Multi - Touch or not in Windows? Where can I find the relevant information from?
It would be a good idea to let us know if you're talking about the full desktop Google Earth (ie. with the COM API) or the thin client web based app.
That being said -- neither versions support touch events natively. Both applications are extremely "mouse heavy" and do virtually all interaction via the mouse. You basically have to map all the touch events to mouse events and go from there. This isn't exactly easy, and requires a lot of low level WinAPI programming -- so it might be easier to get some overlay that does the mouse translation for you.
I personally haven't used the wrapper that Kevin posted, but it looked interesting -- so that might work for you.
EDIT: Kevin's suggestion uses TUIO, which is a pretty popular way of going from touch --> mouse events. In my experience this doesn't do a very good job for Google Earth though, which relies on your typical "mouse down, mouse move, mouse up" patterns ---- this can be done in TUIO, but the actual gestures to get mouse down/move/up actions are clunky.
-- Dan

Zoomable political world map

I'm looking to add an map to my application, which would have a world map with different coloured countries, States (in the US) and Provinces (in Canada). The user should be able zoom in to see details, as the scale for seeing the whole world isn't suitable for seeing details in Europe say. The colours would need to be programmed from my application, so a simple image map isn't appropriate.
Obviously the first place to look was Google, but Google Maps doesn't seem to be able to colour code countries. Google Charts can, but produces a single image, which isn't zoomable.
Am I wrong about google, or is there another way that I can use to produce a suitable map? It's a ruby on rails app, so anything which is ruby specific is fine, but ideally not any other language though if it's the only way, then it's the only way.
I developed jVectorMap for such visualizations.
Django has geo-django; If you want to do feature rich GIS web apps with Rails, you’re gonna have to assemble the pieces yourself.
Google maps is a good client, you can use overlays. You need the GIS data to generate the overlay polygons.

Using Google Maps controls for a large image

I have large images that I would like to have dragging and zooming controls like Google Maps. I started looking into Google Maps API and some other related websites, but I could not find something simple and easy.
MapKi tutorial suggests me to automatically cut tiles and add it as a custom map. This makes sense, but I have so many images in the file server that I don't have time to go through all of them and cut the tiles and figure out zoom levels for each. One good solution would be writing a script that can do this automatically, but that would take a lot of effort and time that has made to look for another solution if there is any.
Hence, is there a way to have similar functionalities as Google Maps controls for images without creating new images or tiles out of the original image. It would be great if you can either post some code or link to the tutorial/documentation. Or, if you know how to do this with Google API without making those tiles, please direct me to the right path. I'm a total newbie with Google Maps API.
I have found the DragZoom for Google Maps, but I don't think that's what I'm looking for.
You're looking for something like Djatoka
You should take a look at the IIIF protocol used by libraries and museums for zooming extremely large images (tens of thousands of pixels on a side +), preparing collections of images on canvases, presenting annotations on those images, etc.
http://iiif.io
…and just for the record here's an open source tiling server with a frontend viewer:
http://iipimage.sourceforge.net/
Check out https://github.com/Murtnowski/GMap-JSlicer
slicer = new JSlicer(document.getElementById('map'), 'myImage.png');
slicer.init();
It's super simple, no need for tile pre-cutting. Just point at a single image and go.