Yes, currently elevation data is limited to North America, however,
it is very responsive because of the OpenGL and would still be quite
useful in 2d. The biggest thing is it is ablity to load maps on it's
own, based on location, unlike the current implementation that
requires the user to load the map, and then load a new one when they
are outside that area. The texturing (raster maps) are loaded from
web map servers. This is a standard spec in the GIS word so data for
around the globe should be available.
Geoff On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:37 AM, globo wrote:
I have been writing a 3d mapping application for my senior thesis using OpenGL (think google earth but on a single developer senior thesis level). I was originally inspired by the KisMac mapping function. The application dynamically loads elevation models and textures from any web map server and creates a 3d model on the fly. After I present it to my department next Thursday, I plan to open source the project. It is currently set up in such a way that it would be fairly easy to integrate into KisMac if anyone is interested.
Geoff
Sounds promising, however DEM files for any location out of the US are rather rare.
OpenGL should speed up rendering a lot. Zooming and panning should be fluid, right? Maybe that would be an approach do make the current 2D rendering a lot more responsive.
globo
