This is an FYI for World Wind users.. or anyone that may be accessing the data through other applications:
This weekend, World Wind’s supporting servers will be unavailable due to a planned building upgrade. World Wind’s primary data server (Blue Marble, LandSat imagery and elevation data) is hosted at network.com and will remain online.
Edit: All done
Have several WorldWind related posts in one today.
First up is a WorldWind clone called XnaGlobe. This is a virtial globe that uses the Microsoft XNA codebase. While WorldWind code was looked at and is the inspiration, most of the code behind this globe is new, so there is not as much in the way of features yet. There is camera control, an atmosphere, tile support, terrain, and extensible layer support for services such as Open Street Maps, NASA Landsat 7, and USGS imagery.
Next up is a WWJava application out of SIMEPA, the Meteorological Institute of Parana / Brazil. I don’t have much information on this project/application, other than the developer is looking to process the satellite and radar data arrays into imagery directly in WWJava.
Lastly we have some new changes in the MyUniPortal project.
Moon layers with a sharpness and brightness adjustment feature.
Coordinate changing on the fly.
New map internet search feature.
Well, it has been a day since the workshop ended, and I am all recovered from it and the drive down and back. So now I am sitting here and reviewing my notes and remembering what all went on. There was a lot of good information shared and discussed, a lot of people quickly figured out that there are others working with World Wind that had similar problems, so solutions have often been duplicated. One of the key reasons for this workshop was to establish a means for collaborative communication so that developers can share issues and solutions within the government community.
It was great to finally meet Patrick Hogan, Randy Kim, Tom Gaskins, Lado Garakanidze and Dave Collins, folks that I have talked to over the past five years. Also was able to meet Nigel Tzeng who has been a member of the World Wind community forum and IRC for years. Funny thing is that I recognized him before even seeing his name tag.
Have to give HUGE thanks to Aaron Cohen, who brought this workshop together in a very short time frame and able to do this without losing his sanity. The attendance was good, over 50 people with a lot more that tried to register but were just too late.
Here is a breakdown of how the day went:
As you can see, it was quite a full day about could have easily grown into a two day event. Some of the above I have already covered in previous posts, so they won’t get that that much of a recap on. Really, I am going to focus more on the first and last sections as they will benefit the most people.
World Wind Architecture, Recent Changes and Coming Changes (World Wind Team)
This was mostly presented by Tom Gaskins with input from Dave Collins and Lado Garakanidze. I will have to revamp this post when I get a copy of the presentations as the slides went too quickly to draw a representation of the World Wind Architecture. There was also some talk about the Java code it’s self and how it is getting too large for a download (about 4MB now). There are plans to break it into two components, a core and an extras, which would make the file sizes even smaller and easier to work with. Tom Gaskins, ever the perfectionist, said he has cringed at times while looking at the WWJava code, Patrick Hogan said that the “Father of Java”, James A. Gosling refers to World Wind as “the gold standard, truly a thing of beauty.”. It was also brought up just how much support from Sun the WWJava team has had; from funding and man hours, to access to the JOGL developers to hosting public domain data on network.com, similar to what Microsoft TerraServer-USA.com is doing for USGS public domain data.
Some of the new features that were brought up include:
Here is some of what is coming “soon” and is what will lead us to a 1.0 release once completed.
Next Dave Collins demonstrated some of the new features, which can be found at http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/demos/
Demonstrated features included: Annotations, Dragging Shapes, Surface Objects, Multimedia Annotations, On Screen Controls and AirspaceBuilder.
What was nice to see with Multimedia Annotations, On Screen Controls was that you can now embed just about any kind of multimedia such as: audio clips, images, slideshows and video.
After demonstrating those new features, Dave took us through a demo of the latest version of the SAR (Search and Rescue) application (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/apps/SARApp/SARApp5.jnlp). This is a tool to help Search and Rescue operations see what the pilot saw and help in the prediction of what the pilot may have done beyond where the radar track ends. This tool is to expedite design and implementation of the search and rescue operation.
Woodchuck: Lessons Learned Implementing Real-time Wireless Network Visualizations
Have to admit, this wins the award for the most unique naming of an application. Woodchuck is the visualization portion of a DoD application called Flying Squirrel which is a wireless discovery and mapping application that is used at governmental installations all over the globe.
They had originally looked into using Google Earth for this but they quickly found out that it is not a suitable tool for this kind of real-time visualization, when WWJava first came out is when they switched over and have gone forward from there.
The application tracks transmitters and marks their locations and numbers as the operator drives around the site. The application also overlays a grid pattern on the globe that has color codes for security level of the wireless network. Signal strengths are mapped at each data point and are visualized by heat maps.
Woodchuck uses a number of algorithms to process / look at the data that are only available to the US government community.
GCCS-J Agile Client
I have covered Agile before (http://earthissquare.com/2009/04/08/agile-client-a-war-fighter-common-operational-picture/).
The Agile Client is a Global Command and Control application for tracking the “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”. The data that Agile displays is near real-time and like Woodchuck they looked at using Google Earth and found that it had poor performance. Due to their interest in using KML, they have implemented a nearly complete KML rendering engine in World Wind.
EOLi
Like Agile, I have covered EOLi before (http://earthissquare.com/2009/03/26/esas-eoli-application/). No new information was presented, same old good stuff! This remains one of the more publicly accessible World Wind-based applications. http://eoli.esa.int/
Developing Decision Support Tools for Sensor Webs
This is a great collection of WWJava enabled applications that are mostly geared towards tracking objects in space. They also have several applications that are aimed more at Intelligence Reporting and Vulnerability Assessment.
Just one exemplary feature of their developed tools is the ability to predict future paths and possible collisions of satellites in orbit, and where they would be in range of a ground-based radar or other threat.
World Wind Use at John Hopkins University: Applied Physics Laboratory (www.JHUAPL.edu)
This was Nigel’s presentation and was the only one showing work he had done with WorldWind.net. Sadly though, because of a number of security and proprietary issues, he had to limit his presentation and not show some of the really cool stuff. JHUAPL has been one of the longest adopters of World Wind, having started in 2005.
The demonstration that he had shown, involved an Integrated Naval Warfare Planner that is used for carrier strike group planning and formation planning.
The award for the “most tongue twisting application naming” goes to:
Integrated Lunar Information Architecture for Decision Support (ILIADS)
This is a really cool application that I am sure we will all be hearing more about in the coming years. This is an application that is being developed for the “Return to the Moon” missions that will be happing in the coming years.
This application has some interesting features on it for planners such as:
This is an application I would really like to get more information on and maybe some hands on time if possible.
GLIDER
GLIDER is also an application that I have covered before (http://earthissquare.com/2009/03/26/nasa-acess-project-glider/). This application has very significant ramifications for world of the satellite data analysis.
Wrap-Up Discussion
The last hour and half was devoted to questions and answers and some general discussion and brain storming. The main question being a Government based community to share information and code in a more secure environment. Also discussed was how to get code changes back into the WWJava project and what it takes to get something done with WWJava code.
Last part first, it takes $ to get stuff done. The current sponsors are driving development that services goals for what they want this technology to do. 80% to 90% of this work goes into the open source core. If you want something done, you simply have to participate with this NASA development project.
Putting community developed code into WWJava is a “sticky issue” that goes back to the current sponsors of WWJava development. There is a lack of confidence in code that “wasn’t written by the WWJava team.” The code changes might also not fit in with the WWJava API, It may that the contribution is more suited for an end user application even thought it is a great bit of code. Currently the best way for the world community to influence development of World Wind is to post the code changes/additions to the World Wind Forum.
As for what is the best vehicle for collaborative participation by the U.S. Government community, well, that went the entire gambit of suggestions. I don’t think anything was really settled as a “yeah, let’s go that way,”all the suggestions had pros and cons, most of the cons though dealt with security clearances.
Conclusions
For the very first World Wind Workshop / Meeting I think it went very well for something that was put together with just over a month lead time. The attendance was clearly a very talented and sophisticated group of technical folks, and if attendance had been limited to those with security clearances more people would have probably been at this workshop.
It was also interesting to see how many governmental readers this blog has, I had several people come up and thank me for the work I do with all the information I compile and share with everyone. Some during the workshop had asked how news and announcements should be sent out.. I almost said.. “Well, 99% chance it will be on my blog not long after the announcement.”
The number of agencies that attended seemed to be a good spread of different groups. Aaron didn’t have that information complied before I had left, so will add that information later.
With a goal of having one workshop a quarter or twice a year, I can see the number of attendees increasing with each time the workshop is held.
Well, in three more days I will be driving 4 hours down to D.C. to attend the USG World Wind Workshop that is being held at the Naval Research site. I will gather as much information as I can and have a recap ready by the weekend.
Pangloss has been busy with the data and imagery from the Cassini probe. His latest update to the Saturn add-on has the newest surface maps for Saturn’s moons, minor placename updates and vectors of Titan’s winds.
You can download the update add-on here.
Had to keep quiet on this a little while as the last of the official signatures were being gathered. But now it is official. On April 30th there will be a one day WorldWind session held at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
Some of what attendees will get to do:
> Discover how other government users are utilizing World Wind technology.
> Coordinate with other government users who have similar needs.
> Discuss your issues with the World Wind development team.
> Learn how to setup a World Wind server and base‐set of data behind your firewall.
Some of the Topics to be covered:
> GOTS applications that utilize World Wind technology
> Acquiring and deployinggovernment-owned or licensed imagery
> Upcoming changes and futurecapabilities for the SDK and WMS Server
> How User Community requirements can influence future capabilities of World Wind
> Collaboration opportunities to better benefit from mutual interests
> Lessons Learned
This workshop is open to all government employees and government contractors using or considering using World Wind. But barring something coming up, I will also be there.
Anyone interesting in attending, can check out the flier.
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
