Topics

1

Feature Requests / WMS maps

« on: August 15, 2009, 10:05:27 PM »

Hi Scott,

I am back in Europe for a month and I again stuck with the Landsat as the only map server that Topofusion supports. I managed to get one local WMS server to work - though it only loads the aerials, not topo maps. I found trying to put the custom WMS server in quite cumbersome - not your fault though - it's more a documentation issue on the WMS servers side. With that, I have a few ideas  for you to entertain.

1. Finding the layers and other features on the WMS servers is a pain if it's not documented (and the ones that I found are not documented). It'd be good if Topofusion's Custom WMS Servers dialog could query the server's GetCapabilities (e.g. by allowing user to paste in the link from http://www.ogc-services.net/) and interpret them in some sensible way (e.g. list available layers).

2. OpenStreetMap WMS additon would be great. There seems to be a group in Germany that runs one server, http://www.osm-wms.de/, though, with my limited knowledge of WMS I could not get it to work. I am sure many people outside US/Can/Aus would appreciate that.

3. Finally, we discussed this last year but I am back at it again - it'd be nice to be able to select any tile set for Photofusion. I know there's problem with different extent of the tiles in diferent tilesets, perhaps in that case you could have user to choose just single tile set (e.g. color aerials) instead of the two (topo, b/w aerials) as now?

Guess that's it for now, take care
MC

2

Beta Testing / Bugs in beta 1.61

« on: February 12, 2004, 09:58:39 PM »

Hey guys,

overall, a great improvement. Mainly, no more memory leaks, at least after a quick run. Also, looks like you have DEM caching on, right?

A few things that I noticed right away:

1. "a" button still does not switch aerial-combo-topo  in 2d.
2. it is not working in 3d anymore, either, instead, switches to 2d
3. why buttons o and p in 3d do not work anymore? It's easier to use them than the 3d dialog box.

A few other suggestions:

It may be worth it to consider generating the 3d image a bit further, outside the 2d map view, in the direction of view - when you look at the 3d scene from smaller angle than say 70 deg, the horizon looks cut too quickly.

Any thoughts on dynamically redrawing the scene as you drag (with right mouse)?

Another thought for more enjoyable playing with Topofusion - how about drawing a small scale bar in the lower left corner, both in 2d and 3d. In 3d the perspective skewes the scale, but, it should not be that hard to change it with the view angle as well.

Anyway, just a couple of evening thoughts.

Later,
MC

3

Beta Testing / Memory leak?

« on: February 09, 2004, 10:25:49 PM »

I've noticed that when I would screw around with the 3D for a while, I'd start paging memory a lot. So, I did a little test...

I load Topofusion with about 60 MBs of DEMs, and display a pretty large chunk at 16M topo resolution (say 1.5x2 quads).

When started, Topofusion takes 190 MB (as per Windows task manager).
Then I switch to 3D - 216 MB, switch back to topo - 207 MB.
So, we gain 26 MB going to 3D and clean only 9 MB going back to 2D.

I keep switching to 3D and back to 2D,
232 MB - 223 MB
238 MB - 229 MB
244 MB - 236 MB
So, we grow by about 15 MB for each 3D on, again clean just 9 MB, leaving 6 MB behind.

then I move the map to see a different set of quads at each 3d switch
3d on - 3d off
254 MB - 245 MB
265 MB - 256 MB

We gain 18 MB, clean 9 MB leaving 9 MB behind.

When I did the same thing with a pretty zoomed up map (4M topo about 4x5 miles), the memory pattern was pretty much the same, so I have feeling it's somewhere in the 3d.

Anybody else notices this?

Just thought of making you aware of this, guess not a big deal for the beta now as things are being still polished. Memory bugs can be pretty hard to track.

Thanks,

MC

4

Beta Testing / "Shadow" GPS trail in 3d

« on: February 08, 2004, 12:58:21 AM »

Hello guys,

first of all, the 3D is amazing, especially the aerials. Spent good time of the afternoon and evening screwing around with it (in between of shoveling snow).

I saw most of the problems that I noticed in bug reports already, so, just wanna mention, that most pressing is some kind of caching of the DEMs. I have about 250 MB of them now, and, things are starting to get a bit sluggish, plus, Windows starts to complain about low virtual memory, which I've not seen before (I have 512 MB RAM).
The way I am solving this now is to have multiple directories with DEMs from Utah, California,...

The little problem I see is that the GPS track sometimes shows shadowing, probably it's plotted twice, once on the flat map and second time on the 3d? An example is at:
http://www.chpc.utah.edu/~mcuma/images/topo/shore.jpg

One more little thing, the screen capture does not work in 3D, but, that's not really a big deal.

Take care,
MC