One of the most commonly asked features for WWJava is KML support for it.  And what most developers have done is to write their own support for KML.

But now there is a Java API for KML (JAK) support.  So now developers that want to have KML support in WWJava can add it in via this API.

The objective of the Java API for KML is to provide Java interfaces for easy access to KML (Keyhole Markup Language) data.

 

The main goal of the Java API for KML (JAK) is to provide automatically generated full reference implementation of the KML object model defined by OGC’s KML standard and Google’s GX extensions. It is an object orientated API that enables the convenient and easy use of KML in existing Java environments.

FalconView has been released as open source under a mandate from the government by Georgia Tech. FalconView is a PC based Mapping Application widely used by the US DoD and Allied countries, but historically it has not been available to the general public.

FalconView is a Windows mapping system that displays various types of maps and geographically referenced overlays, and is an integral part of the Portable Flight Planning Software (PFPS).

Supported Base Maps:

• GeoTIFF
• TIROS TopoBath
• Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) / LIDAR
• Vector Product Format (VPF)
• CADRG
• MrSID

Open Source Features:

1. Base Map Types Supported
2. KML Support
3. WMS Support
4. Shapefile Support
5. Drawings
6. Analysis Tool
7. Moving Map Tool
8. ArcGIS Support
9. SkyView Mode
10. NITF Support
11. Elevation Data / Contour Lines
12. Coordinate Grid / Coordinate Systems
13. Programmatic Extensibility

Now what would be interesting to do is integrate some/most of the features into WWJava.

Omega on the WorldWind Forum has been at it again, this time with improving normals in WWJava.

Here is his post on the topic:

I’ve been toying with per-pixel lighting (see my Sun shader thread), but found that the normals generated by the tesselator are quite low resolution. So I implemented a normal map layer that calculates the normals from an elevation model.

It pulls the elevation data directly from the ElevationModel, generates a normal map for each elevation tile, and passes the normal map as a texture in a TiledImageLayer to a shader, which calculates per-pixel lighting and shading. The results are quite encouraging (see screenshots).

The exaggeration in the shader can be changed in realtime, and so could the elevation colors (by editing the fragment shader to accept different color gradients as uniforms).

And the results of his changes:

Does this make a big difference?  You bet it does!  Here is a comparison of “How it is done” and “How it can be done better”:

This is done per vertex

Same view with per pixel norm map

Been saving up several WorldWind related posts and have enough now to post a round-up of them.

WorldWind forum member Pangloss has not been sitting around doing nothing, he has several WW.net add-ons of data that are worth taking a look at.

First up is a Lunar Gravity add-on.  This is data that was measured by Japan’s Kaguya mission.

Next up is his Sea-Breeze add-on for WW.net, this add-on pack includes several different Ocean related add-ons groups: Geology and Geophysics, Oceanography, Meteorology and Climate Change.  There are over 600 layers in this add-on pack, so there is something for every aspect of the ocean you can think of.

Another WorldWind forum member, antdavison, has a 3dsmax/maxscript for conversion of photoreal ms-flightSim textures to WorldWind  data.pyramid format.

Also, forum member Omega has been having way too much fun is seems with the WWJava SDK.  His latest coding has a sun shader running on the WWJava globe.

The code makes use of the GLSL shaders and shows a reflection of the sun off the ocean using basic specular lighting calculations. It also shows the NASA night lights layer on the side of the earth with no sun.

In the last several days, there have been a couple of WorldWind related job postings.

First up is a 3 month contract job.

This person will be developing the software of the NASA World Wind Cross-Platform SDK and infrastructure.
- Design and implement 3D geographic visualization software.
- Implements web services.
- Designs databases. Creates Technical Documentation.
- Implements build and release procedures.
- Test and corrects software.
- Measures and optimizes performance.
- Develops and researches visualizations algorithms
- Work collaboratively with members of the open-source community to assist usage, evaluate request and contributions, and define requirements.

Check the forum post for details.

Not to wait around for someone else to do it, WW forum member vash has used the new WWJava Virtual Earth code to make a new and improved OpenStreetMap layer that uses the ’slippy map’ Mercator version instead of the WMS version.  Here is the code for your WWJava project.