Overview
Geoweb3d Desktop is a standalone GIS visualization application that makes creating advanced 3D graphics from GIS data an easy task. It is an product that integrates a powerful new 3D engine, a web browser, and ArcGIS. It is an easy to use product that has been built from the ground up to advance 3D GIS visualization.
Visualize your geospatial data in new, powerful, and creative ways. The way you represent your data can range from the realistic to the thematic and everywhere in between. Geoweb3d lets you clearly and easy present your datasets in rich 3D quality. Geoweb3d is an all-in-one, easy-to-use application that connects the momentum of Web GIS with high-performance, high-quality 3D geospatial visualization.
Our new 3D engine leverages the very latest in video card GPU technology, and has been developed from the ground up for modern 3D geospatial scene generation. This technology can generate rich visuals on the fly directly from native GIS datasets.
Integrating the web into the application brings effortless data sharing and takes advantage of the growing volume of online geospatial content. Interoperability, scalability, and collaboration amongst web enabled geospatial data has seen, and will continue to see, exponential growth.
Bringing GIS users the most comprehensive solution meant integrating ESRI’s ArcGIS Engine into the core of the application. Personal and enterprise GIS environments will plug and play. You can now visualize geodatabases like never before.
Geoweb3d Desktop is an all-in-one geospatial visualization product: an application that is mature in performance and capability while remaining intuitive and fun to use.
For a sneak peek at Geoweb3d Desktop, please visit our gallery.
User Interface
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a new look at software user interfaces. It has been designed to create effective, high fidelity visualizations directly from geospatial data while remaining easy and enjoyable to use.
Following are several of the primary components of Geoweb3d Desktop:
Each individual view, be it 3D, ArcGIS or web, is accessed via a dedicated tab, much like a modern web browser. You may have as many or as few of each kind of tab active at a time. Above the tabs are the 'shelves': thematically grouped sets of user interface controls. The interface is similar to 'ribbons', in as much as only the shelves related to the task at hand will be present at any one time. Based on selections and actions throughout the GUI, the shelves will switch in and out automatically. This means you can enjoy a streamlined user experience that takes the guesswork out of controlling the application.
Shown on the left side of the screenshot above are the table of contents (TOC) and the attribute mapping window. The table of contents is shared across all views, eliminating data redundancy and making it easy to view your project in many different ways. Layers can be instantly turned on and off with checkboxes, letting the user switch on and off alternate representations of a single collection of source data.
All windows are all dockable, relocatable, and are rendered from style sheets. Style sheets can be loaded at any time and can be modified to tailor the appearance of the application.
Users will find the GUI very easy and intuitive to use without having to sacrifice the ability to control and adjust almost any element of the visualization.
Table of Contents
All layer management is handled from a single, shared table of contents (TOC).
All datasets and their associated representation(s) can be selected and organized from this view.
Layers can be consolidated into groups, helping with organization and rapid control of the scene. These groups, layers, and representations can be enabled or disabled, providing the ability to demonstrate alternate representations of a single dataset, or to emphasize key components of the visualization.
The shelves and their associated user interface controls will customize themselves according to your current selection in the TOC. This means you are only ever presented with user interface controls that are relevant to what you are working on at the time. The layers in the TOC are shared across all ArcGIS, web, and 3D views, ensuring easy data reuse.
Tabs
All controls, 3D views, web pages, and ArcGIS maps are located in tabbed displays for efficient navigation and organization.
Controls
The control tabs are located, by default, at the top of the desktop application. These tabs and their associated shelves are enabled and disabled on a contextual basis. The available tabs change based on current actions and selected layer types.
For example, if the user selects a raster layer, a 'raster' shelf appears containing all the user feedback and controls relevant to a raster layer. If next a vector layer is selected, the 'raster' shelf will be replaced
Views
The view tabs host the primary displays of the 3D, ArcGIS, or Web views. Users can add any number and combination of these views.
Cloning and copying locations acoss the different views is simple. Visualize datasets in various ways, both realistically and thematically, across a variety of different views.
Shelves
Each tab has an associated shelf that goes with it. These shelves, as shown below, are made up of a series of individual user interface elements, or what are referred to as frames.
The design is to gather and display only relevant controls together based upon the type of selected data and the current action.
These shelf items, or frames, can be dynamically created based certain operations, such as adding a 3D bookmark.
The frames on the shelf can slide left and right for easy navigation. Frames align and fold off to the sides, maximizing real estate without native size concessions. The interface has been described as ribbons meets cover flow.
3D Views
Any number of independent 3D views can be added at runtime. Each of these views is capable of assembling datasets into effective and rich 3D visualizations.
Each view can have independent positioning, as well as other settings such as time of day. The 3D engine, having been built for large datasets, is both efficient and optimized for spatial management and resource handling across the views. Any view can be cloned, copied, pasted, and removed.
Web Views
A complete web browser is fully integrated within Geoweb3d Desktop.
Users can browse web pages and integrate with other geo-enabled applications. Push and pull geodata from the web. Copy and paste views from the other 3D and ArcGIS applications for correlation and data discovery.
As geo-enabled web applications continue to broaden their offerings, Geoweb3d's web component will provide limitless scalability.
Coming soon is a scripting console window for users to create, load, and save JavaScript for tailored integration with other web applications.
ArcGIS View
If you are one of the many people that use ArcGIS Desktop, you’ll already have a head start when you first run Geoweb3d. Add a new ArcGIS tab, load up one of your projects, and start navigating your maps using the same user interface tools you use on a regular basis. All supported layers will automatically be added to the shared table of contents, meaning they can immediately be visualized within the 3D scene.
All Geoweb3d products support the loading of vector data from personal and file geodatabases, given a valid ArcGIS license. This means they can plug and play with established ArcGIS solutions, bringing all the capabilities of Geoweb3d without the need for data conversion or manipulation.
Attribute Mapping
By default, data representations within the 3D scene can be customized simply by clicking the representation in the table of contents and changing settings like color and elevation up on the shelf. What if you need to communicate differences between categories or individual features in the dataset?
Geoweb3d Desktop offers an advanced attribute mapping interface that provides unprecedented flexibility while remaining easy to use. One or more classifications can be defined in the specialized attribute mapping table of contents, where they can be customized on the shelf, just as if they were individual layers.
The power of Geoweb3d attribute mapping goes one step further. The user is not limited to just mapping one attribute to one component of the visual representation. Any number of attributes can be classified by any available aspect of the visualization. For example, extruded building footprints could be given a height according to their real-world height, while specific types of buildings like police and fire stations could be color-coded.
Furthermore, the same visual aspect of the representation can be defined based on multiple attributes. This is possible through Geoweb3d’s unique ‘cascaded attribute mapping’. For anyone who has used cascading style sheets (CSS) in web design, this concept will already be familiar. Any visual aspect of a representation can be defined multiple times, with the last applicable definition taking priority.
For example, a point shapefile of a tree grove could be represented using tree models, with each tree type represented using an appropriate 3D model. Dead trees, regardless of type, could be represented using a 3D model of a dead tree. The former classification would be identified by mapping against a ‘tree type’ attribute while the latter would be identified by a ‘health’ attribute. Through cascaded attribute mapping, the ‘health’ attribute map could take priority over the ‘tree type’ attribute map. Therefore, a tree the is classified as both ‘pine’ and ‘healthy’ would appear as a live pine tree until its ‘health’ value was changed to ‘dead’, at which point it would appear as a dead tree.
Extend Across Multiple Displays and Computers
Displays can be grouped together and used for any number of applications. Users can extend the field of view or visualize alternative representations of common datasets in real-time.
The Geoweb3d application has been designed, optimized, and ready for the scalability that this offers. The user can gang or cloud resources together for immersive, distributed applications.
Highly scalable and effective visualizations can be assembled at runtime, across displays, rooms, cities, or the world.
One application can be the designate controller for all, assuring ease of use. 3D GIS visualizations can now escape the single view, single window application.
Projects
Projects are non-proprietary xml files that store the Desktop configuration for reuse and distribution. Users can recall any number of different projects with different datasets, representations, filters, and layouts. The state of all 3D, ArcGIS, and web views are captured and can be recalled at any time. Geoweb3d project files are human-readable and source control friendly.
3D Bookmarks
A 3D Bookmark saves a location, similar to a Kml placemark, but with additional information and capabilities. A thumbnail of each bookmark is displayed along with its location, menu of capabilities, and a larger hover preview of the captured scene.
Complimentary Technology and Standards
The collaborative geospatial community is making great strides in assembling more net-centric datasets. From the local to federal level, agencies are increasing the availability of GIS data. The participatory element of the Geoweb continues to gather geotagged content. Reuse initiatives such as Google 3D Warehouse will continue to see significant growth.
Through open standards, this data will be readily compatible with Geoweb3d for plug and play visualization and Web GIS integration. As users worldwide make their house, their university, their city – Geoweb3d can integrate this data, instantly.
