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The movie below details a spherical display under the name of Panorama Ball Vision:
We knew this was coming and indeed it was possible via other routes but its still quite a notable move with ESRI teaming up with Microsoft to offer Virtual Earth directly within ArcGIS. The full announcement is below:
ESRI Expands Virtual Earth Access in GIS by Teaming with Microsoft
ArcGIS Users to Bring Dynamic Basemaps into Analysis and Service Applications
Redlands, California—March 26, 2009— ESRI announced today a new agreement with Microsoft Corporation that gives ArcGIS users fast access to Microsoft Virtual Earth for their geographic information system (GIS) projects. As part of ArcGIS Online at the ArcGIS 9.3.1 release, ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server users will be able to connect directly to Virtual Earth and quickly start their GIS projects with ready-to-use content.
"Our agreement with Microsoft defines a pattern of sharing geospatial data on the Web that promises to grow the GIS community," says ESRI President Jack Dangermond. "By bringing Virtual Earth into their GIS projects, people will have a greater opportunity to perform spatial analysis based on dynamic data."
ArcGIS users who are current on maintenance and have an Internet connection will have access to Virtual Earth for a variety of up-to-date mapping content.including aerial imagery, roads, and hybrid (aerial with labels) imagery. With a familiar look, imagery access will appear as another data layer in GIS. The imagery will provide excellent background maps on which users can overlay their operational data. This means users will be able to focus more on their business data than on its context.
For example, an electric utility can layer its distribution line data over a Virtual Earth aerial view of a neighborhood to create a map of its lines and customer connections. This Virtual Earth background layer is useful for editing the company's data and can be easily shared online with other company users.
ArcGIS users can build Web applications that support geospatial services through ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Web Software Developer Kits (SDKs) , including APIs for JavaScript, Flex, and Microsoft Silverlight. This enables them to provide their clients with access to Virtual Earth content from their applications.
“ESRI and Microsoft share a long history of building geographic information systems solutions that combine both of our companies’ strengths,” said Chris Sampson, director of Virtual Earth at Microsoft. “By integrating Microsoft Virtual Earth across all ESRI ArcGIS products, we can provide our mutual customers with spatial analysis software that has instant access to comprehensive geographic data that can only be found in a software plus services solution.”
ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 users who are current on maintenance will be offered access to Virtual Earth at no cost. ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 users will have instant access to a built-in 90-day evaluation of Virtual Earth. After the evaluation ends, ArcGIS Server users will be able to purchase an annual subscription that will be based on transactions.
For more information, visit www.esri.com/agolwhatsnew.
Tilt Shift photography is perfect for creating pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs. Thankfully you no longer need an expensive lens or a moderate level of expertise with Photoshop to make them thanks to Tilt Shift Maker.
Tilt Shift Maker is a free service that allows you to upload photographs up to 4Mb in size or 4096 x 4096 resolution and set the size/area of blur to create the tilt shift effect. Once your happy with your creation simply click 'download' to get a full size tilt shift image back.
We have always had a soft spot for trueSpace, the 3D software package from Caligari. It was one of the first modellers we used back 10 years ago for ActiveWorlds."As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud..."The learning curve maybe slightly higher than SketchUp and its not quite aimed at the same community, but it imports all of the major file formats and puts them direct into Virtual Earth.
With a focus on Neogeography, Web 2.0 and the various emerging techniques for urban visualisation the booklet has been written as a preview to the forthcoming Digital Urban 'recipe book' to be published fourth quarter of 2008.
The booklet is being sold at below cost price and is available now. For all those that have emailed to reserve copies, thank you, these are set aside and guaranteed for shipping soon as payment is received.
For us it has been a week of Web 2.0 buzz words from Crowd Sourcing to Collective Intelligence onwards towards Volunteered Geographic Information. While these may be buzz words they are also evidence of an important rising phenomena and an understanding that in today's Web 2.0 World content is key.
Second Life broke into the main stream during 2007 and perhaps more than any virtual world to date illustrated how digital environments can be used for visualisation and communication in the sciences.
Due early in 2008 'Home' is not looking like taking Second Life's crown but with the ability to tap into the PS3's graphics ability it looks like being the most visually impressive virtual world to date -note the real time shadows, something that Second Life is crying out for.
Google Earth changed the communication of geographical information forever. It ushered in the era of global datasets, rich three dimensional landscapes and virtual cities, we still remember the day a beta version of KeyHole was installed on our machine, in short it was a once in a decade software moment.
When showing Google Earth to a new user they will nine times out of ten ask to take a look at their own house, this is the natural reaction of wanting to check out your own familiar environment from a new point of view. After the local neighbourhood tour there is often a quick look at the Pyramids of Egypt, a fly around the Matterhorn before skipping across the globe to the
The general user may well be aware of the ability to add in their own information or even should they wish that they can create a 3D version of their own house using SketchUp but outside of the geographical world we would question the long term nature of systems such as Google Earth. So where does it go from here to attract new users or get those users who have downloaded it to reopen and explore new features?
Integrating virtual worlds into Google earth would be more problematic, after all where would you build? Would the green areas of the globe become sprawling areas of Second Life type construction as the real world cities will of already been built. Instead we see Google Earth type datasets and technology being integrated within virtual worlds.
This is not to say that Google Earth has fallen out of favour with us, indeed this would be far from the truth. It is just that with today’s rapidly moving technology and with it the high expectations of users we would like something a little more. We would like an earth that is populated, Second Earth if you want to put a name to it.
To add to the location we used the sound of a helicopter in flight from here which is subsequently imported into Movie Maker and dragged into the movie clip bar as many times as required to play throughout the clip. The sound trails off towards the end so to ensure a continuous sound effect each clip is overlapped - as pictured above.
Our section in Second Life, kindly donated by Nature, is focused on communicating city space. As such the image of San Francisco from Virtual Earth, created as part of our tutorial on Virtual Earth panoramas, is a natural choice to include within the environment.
By noting down the pixel size of each tile a 'prim' in Second Life can be created at the required aspect ratio - thus to recreate the whole image 16 'prims' are required aligned using the grid snap option.
Drop in and see us in Second Life - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Second Nature/232/169/116 or IM Smithee Bertrand and we will send you a teleport link.
As a side note to this post - the interchangeability between systems such as Virtual Earth, Google Earth and Second Life raises various issues of copyright.
The creation of panoramas essentially strips out all reference to the images source, as such this is an issue to watch.
With the digital representation of cities ever improving it is possible to create some stunning panoramic images from simple screen grabs. Pictured above and below is a panorama of San Francisco captured from Microsoft's Virtual Earth:
To appreciate the image it really needs to be viewed at full resolution - view the high res version (6mb).
