Hey guys, In the event that 3 of our 15 summer of code slots don't work out, we will need a mentor for the Geotools #4 choice:
3-Dimensional Rendering Pipeline Component for GIS Servers This is a duplication as we will already have accepted a 3D proposal (unless it is one of the 3 rejected), but the other projects are out of good applications and two competing 3D implementations wouldn't be so bad. Apparently the second 3D proposal requires little supervision, but a official mentor is still required (keep in mind that the mentor can delegate to others -- the official mentor is just the point man). We need to resolve this TODAY. If anyone is willing to mentor, please chime in; Jody is the current mentor, but we should stick to having one student per mentor. As a mentor, you would be responsible for staying in contact with the student a couple times during the week, keeping him on track, getting him the help he needs, and finally evaluating his performance at the end. Thanks, Cory. ---- Full text: 3-Dimensional Rendering Pipeline Component for GIS Servers Synopsis The proposed code is to implement an interactive 3-D viewer for the massive terrain-based data sets provided by a GIS server. This will be substantially more interesting than a standard real-time 3-D viewer (e.g. as found in a video game), because the data needs to be streamed from a remote source, and because the data is typically massive. Benefits Data provided by a GIS server is most naturally viewed in three dimensions. Existing 2-D viewers can only present a limited amount of information to the user, and can be awkward to use. A 3-D viewer component, written in Java (with JOGL) as a client to a GIS server, will allow full access to dense geographical data, allowing a number of new possibilities: from simple walkthrough- and flythrough-type applications, to more specific visualizations such as for route planning, statistical analysis, or network modeling. Deliverables The code is to be implemented as a re-usable component written in Java, accessing the native environment's OpenGL driver using JOGL, and likely embeddable into a web application (with Java Web Start), or into uDig directly. The component should be as generic as possible, so as to allow a high degree of reuse (e.g. across different types of layers provided by the GIS server, or different specific viewing applications desired by the user), while still taking care to do all of the necessary client/server communication and visibility computation. This will be a typical split betwen policy and mechanism; the latter will be implemented, and the reusability means that the former can be easily changed. But a complete, simple application (implementing a typical flythrough application, for simple exploration of a 3-D environment), will also be implemented. Project Details The client viewer will need to be very careful about how it fetches data from a GIS server. Advanced visibility algorithms will need to be applied; the author's experience indicates that this will be a split-server/client implementation, in which the client requests the minimum amount of geometry to render a view from its local position, and the server is able to provide at least a very good estimate of the correct amount on demand (perhaps with some additional culling by the client). Because the author does not have experience with GIS specifically, some background research will be necessary. For example, augmenting the server's data set with a visibility graph may work, in which case a fair amount of pre-computation will be necessary; but if GIS primitives alone suffice, then likely only a client needs to be written. These details will be worked out in the initial stages of the project, by the author. Project Schedule Background research will take place between now until April 11 (when publication of application acceptance occurs). After this time, the author expects to communicate more directly with the project community and possible mentor(s). Coding is to follow the standard GSoC timeline, beginning on May 28 and ending around August 20, with regular progress reports and evaluations. Bio Though the author has not yet used GIS, he has experience with a very similar client-server application, as part of the Building Model Generation project sponsored by MIT's Computer Graphics Group. In this project, the author built programs to analyze floorplans of MIT's campus buildings and extract detailed 2-D and 3-D geometry and topology information. These data were then stored in a central (non-GIS) database, accessed by a client viewer (also written by the author as a Java-based web application) to intelligently fetch geometry on demand in response to the user's movement commands. The geometry was stored in a visibility graph to make this a reasonably easy task for the client; the author expects to need to do some research regarding how to implement a similar technique with a GIS server. More information about the author's professional background can be read at http://web.mit.edu/mic/Public/resume.pdf. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
