Saturday, December 15, 2007

Blue Marble Twelve Month for WWJ

The imagery is already there for WorldWind .Net, so it is just a matter of configuring a layer for each of the twelve Blue Marble Next Generation datasets for the year 2004.

Blue Marble twelve month for WorldWind Java
Download BMNG2004Layer and BMNGTwelveMonth example application. The layer goes in worldwind.layers.Earth, and the example in ...examples.

None of the twelve layers have a 'base' image yet (except may 2004), so you will have to wait for the level zero tiles to download the first time you switch month.

A WMS version of those datasets should be available a some point.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Full Mars And Moon Globes for WWJ

Here they are, the Moon and Mars with elevations and the full layer sets from the .Net version.

WWJ Mars THEMIS ColorMars THEMIS Color layer

WWJ Moon Clementine 30Moon Clementine 30

Download WWJ_Moon_And_Mars.zip (15k) and add to your WorldWind Java SDK source tree.

The package includes two example applications that put together the two globes with the appropriate layers.

Be patient at first run: these globes do not have a 'base' image layer that ensures you see something even with an empty cache. So the first time you will have to wait for the level zero tiles to get through before you have a planet to spin.

The elevation data comes from the same servers as the .Net version but in zipped files. This service has never been used and has an empty cache right now, so the first users will have to wait a bit longer to see some alien mountains.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

WWJ Look Around View Example

WWJ View Look Around example
Here is a view control panel example that simulates a 'first person' view with the default orbit view.

Download the ViewLookAround.java example - remove the .txt extension and add it to the worldwind.examples package.

Although this is far from a first person view implementation that would let you walk or fly around, this simple example allows you to 'look around', as if you where suspended in the air at a fixed position.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

WWJ Layers That Shall Not Be Named

Vladimir Silva who brought us the World Wind Eclipse RCP Geobrowser just posted a new contribution on the WWJ forum. Something that many where hoping for - without saying it too loud... someone said applet?

Check this forum thread, and the reference material.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

WorldWind Java SDK 0.4.1 offline mode fix

A bug fix release has been posted late today. Here are links to the WWJ SDK 0.4.1 (Zip 6.5M) and the Java Web Start demo 0.4.1.

From the forum post:

"Fixed NetworkStatus bug causing freeze for some, added an off-line attribute to the WorldWind class to elect not to use the network, added a show-network-status attribute to StatusBar".


And from a post related to offline mode issues:
"I've also added an off-line mode attribute to WorldWind for apps that never want to contact the net. Just invoke WorldWind.setOfflineMode(true)."

I updated my previous post about 0.4 - was it yesterday?

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

WorldWind Java SDK 0.4 is out

As previously hinted a new code update has been posted today by the WWJ team. Here are links to the WWJ SDK 0.4.1 (Zip 6.5M) and the Java Web Start demo 0.4.1.

WorldWind Java SDK 0.4.0
What has changed since 0.3 - October 10, 2007:

Annotations are the main new feature - you have already seen a couple screenshots here. I will come back to them in future posts.

As usual, many bug fixes and corrections have taken place - some in response to the forum comments and requests: the shutdown process has been revisited, the input handler now allows the application to use and consume mouse events before they get to it, layer opacity support has been improved - although it is not yet what you would expect. WMS capability parsing has been made faster too and network operations should generally behave better when offline.

Flat worlds have been moved to the main source folder so you can have a glimpse of it - however it is not yet ready for prime time as you will quickly find out.

The image tiles processing order has been revisited and will now load lower resolution levels before loading the needed one. This behavior ensures that a layer stays 'consistent' when zooming out - tiles are not missing.

New level set constructors allow to create custom tiled image layers - see BMNGLandsatCombined example.

You will notice the overall WorldWind SDK package is lighter - 6.5M vs 13M. The Blue Marble level zero tiles have been removed and replaced with the BMNGOneImage 'base' layer. Worldwind.jar is now 1.6M vs 5M in the previous version.

December 5 update: version 0.4.1 has been posted in response to problems with offline operations: "fixed NetworkStatus bug causing freeze for some, added an off-line attribute to the WorldWind class to elect not to use the network, added a show-network-status attribute to StatusBar". Above links have been updated.

Check this post on the WWJ forum for details of the version readme.txt and follow up comments. Also check WorldWind Java SDK home pages at NASA Learning Technologies and WorldWind Central.