Taking a break helps get things done

Last Saturday I had a lot of fun, went out on town and won small dance off's at Zhivago. This helped me settle down and I took ANZAC Day to fix the small bug that was plaguing Dstile (promise this is my last dstile post till I get the drag and drop terrain import working). So it can now import MultiSpectral and Panchromatic Imagery Seamlessly and save them as .png tiles. It is of course a bit slow with World Wind showing off all the direct-x graphics goodies at the same time, but it works. Till terrain import gets done have fun with this one.

Dstile using GDAL-SWIG C# API

Dstile like functionality has finally been made programmatic in World Wind allowing run-time tiling of imagery and quick import of file based formats such as Tiff, Imagine, ECW and MrSID into World Wind. ESRI ArcSDE formats will soon be supported by GDAL as well.

While implementing it I ran into some API bugs as expected. These need to resolved before the functionality is ready for prime time. The bindings are also a moving target. The developments in GDAL will need to be tracked to keep this functionality current.

As WWJava develops it will benefit from the extensive Java based format support in JAI, GeoTools and GDAL Java API.

Dstile and Imagery Drag Drop

Some may think Super Overlays are cool, but you can do the same in World Wind by just dragging and dropping georeferenced imagery. The tiles are built using the windows version of the same tool that tiles the imagery on the server. A simple front end figures out what options you will need to add the imagery and produces a corresponding xml. The tiling takes some time to build to full resolution, and reproject.

For instant gratification I am considering doing a quick thumbnail of the reprojected image and loading it as an Overlay. This will also allow georeferencing by hand of ungeoreferenced imagery.

Most of the heavy lifting is done by the GDAL C++ API which are used in Dstile. I am planning a migration to the C# bindings as they mature.

Kyoto and Carbon SAR Mosaics

I have been tic-tacing with the Kyoto and Carbon science team to bring their PALSAR mosaics to World Wind. At one point there was a note that World Wind has no support for KML. So I made a KML Ground Overlay with one of the Jers Mosaic scenes available at the GRFM(Global Rain Forest Monitoring) Site. The kml can be found here. It works fine in both Google Earth and World Wind.

World Wind does not have extensive support for KML, but to say it has no support is a fallacy. There was some discussion on the mailing list about this too. I am planning to get all the free JERS data from GRFM and serve it via World Wind , even if it is just to prove a point.

The best and broadest user reach can be obtained through hosting a WMS server which is supported in a lot of viewers.

Last Night in Jakarta

So Friday night out after more work. This time we started with dinner, watching belly dancing and smoking shisha in a Lebanese restaurant. Then moved onto CJ's with a fantastic live band playing latin music and lots of gorgeous people.

I am going back tomorrow. Need to manipulate situations so that I get to come back.

In Flight Cake Service

I have been bouncing around Asia quite a bit these days. I was flying Singapore Airlines on the 14th which also happens to be my birthday. Work had set quite a surprise for me , they had a cake ordered for me on the plane. I walked through check-in and immigration being wished happy birthday at every step.

Had quite a bit of fun once in Jakarta as well. Went with a few friends Fabrice has made while there to Aphrodite. More nights of action in Jakarta coming up.

Night in Tokyo

Finally managed to get away for a day to loiter about in Tokyo. Started in Akihabara again. Passed by Ginza and the Kabuki Theater. Got to go there for a show sometime. Finally ended up in Ruppongi hills with panoramic view of the sprawl of Tokyo.

Mori museum and the Tokyo city view are good counterpoints. The current exhibition shows some Japanese Scrolls and Panels of life in Japan as it used to be an looking out of the balcony you can see Tokyo as it is now - a river of light.

Back to Jakarta in a few days hardly any time to breath. Of course I would be doing JAXA a discourtesy if I did not include some of their very nice and affordable 2.5m product here.

2nd day in Tsukuba - Road to the poor house

The second day of conference is nearly over. I have done my presentation with usual flourish and some colourful SAR images. Then I went to Tokyo-Akihabara with Kostas from DLR. Spent some time admiring the lights and trying all the ATM's in sight. I was feeling rather poor , till I realized the only international ATM's are the Post Office - something to be really careful about next time I am in Japan.

There was some interest in using World Wind to display imagery from a Global PALSAR mosaic built up every 4months (Over land and cloud free - it's SAR !!) from the Kyoto and Carbon initiative. They have been fiddling with Google Earth since that's all they know off but World Wind can push in on this, since adding all the KML's to show imagery in Google is a real pain. Hope we can attract the Scientific community on the Envrionmental and Global Warming issues more with this data.

Singapore-Narita-Tsukuba

Finally I am at my destination. After flying around for 13 hours. The time difference is only abut 1 hour from Adelaide but it is winter instead of summer. It is getting warmer in Tokyo though, nearly spring.

Tsukuba Centre is about an hour train ride from Akihabara. It has got quite a few science and research setups and a giant rocket overlooking the city. I did the first two things i had to do: went on a Manga shopping spree and got the latest chapters of Bleach and had as much Sushi and Sashimi I could handle. The eel tastes the best.

Clipsal 500 and Night before Japan

Finally I am on the long awaited trip to Tokyo. So I decided to go wild on the friday night before. Plenty of people in town for the Adelaide Clipsal 500 and showgirls in plenty. I went off with a random group of builder and had heaps of crazy fun. Talked to a showgirl about Freud and Oedipus complex, she is first year psyche. It was quite refreshing.

Finished off dog tired dancing at Sugar - with girls pulling me around, and aggressive guys threatening to throw me out. Barely got out of that one ... Phew!

Now on the long flight to Narita. See you all on the other side.

Guilty of Web Design

It is often said that programmers should not do Graphic Design. Now I know why. If I can get away with toying with vertices in Blender, I can't get away with toying with colours in CSS. This bright yellow page is my handiwork. I am getting better ... slowly. I need to tone it down.

Soon I will be willing to do web design for beds and other things in kind to put in the bed with me ....

Ironclad World

So finally we have an Iron Python console in World Wind thanks to Ranen Ghosh. It is called TerminallyIll but you can do some sick cool scripting and toying around with it. Like ... it will be trivial to make model spin around with 1 line of script code. Here are few lines showing changing over from BMNG Bathymetry(default) to plain old BMNG.

Sydney Landmarks

I decided to give the IDE a break for a few days and took up Blender to make some simple models in .x format for use with World Wind Model Feature. Here are the results of a few hours of labour, a couple of simplistic models of Sydney Landmarks.

This is a call to all aspiring modelers to add some contributions to our collection. Various global landmarks are appreciated. Failing that, be selfish and model your own house or office. Help us grow World Wind.

World Wind Video with Cinematic Effects

Fabrice has come up with a nice World Wind Video complete with lens flare and cloud transitions. The idea is to deliver the world to the palm of your hand.

Viva Las Vegas

The most detailed Planet 9 Model available for World Wind - Las Vegas works in version 1.4 with a simple camera fix and boy it looks good. I could not resist. Here is the best of Vegas, money comes from 3G's Girls, Gambling and Games.

World Wind 1.4 and 3D Cities

It was a long and painful labour and at times the parents threatened to shoot the doctor, but finally World Wind 1.4 is out of the SVN as a release. I cross posted on the Google Earth Boards hoping to get some flame, but not much luck yet. There might be new forums for GE, need to check that out.

It is good to see more creative and progressive companies using World Wind as delivery platform for their creations and ideas. World Wind has similar potentials as Second Life in this respect and can create a significant trading ecosystem. Planet 9 Studios which specializes in 3D Modelling of buildings and cityscapes has several cities available in World Wind. The World Wind team is working to turn this into a suitable business idea for paying clients.

How Now Brown Cow ?

So now we have an integrated Collada parser which constructs a mesh from the vertices , but Textures are not there yet. The Object selection code is also half way there, so someone can make a plugin with farm animal noises, click on the cow and it says ... moo! No better way to teach animal sounds to kids.

Here is a Collada cow staring at the stars and pondering general relativity.

TV Tuner and Curried Sausages

My flatmate got a new all black mac book pro with a TV Tuner card, so in a fit I dug up my old TV Tuner card and watched the Australia-New Zealand match. It only works halfway with an external antenna. I really need a better card and antenna. Luckily Australia won. So it was worth my while.

I also managed to watch Al Gore's documentary, "The Inconvenient Truth". Apart from the obvious political spin, he does make some valid points about Global Warming our responsibility. So Withak's Global Flood Plugin is rather timely. It still has some Z-Buffer issues and I am looking at adding the transparency and wave shaders for localized water to it. Otherwise it does a good job.

I also tried a new dish - sausages curried with red paste and mustard. It turned out pretty well and goes with a nice beer. Now time to enjoy the Australian Summer and wonder why the weather is suddenly changing from Mediterranean to Monsoon.

GDAL PALSAR Complex Driver

About 1 year ago I wrote the ALOS-PALSAR Driver for RAT in IDL. Since then I have replaced IDL with scientific Python in my kit. The objective is to eventually get RAT functions implemented into a Python Based Radar Toolkit which will attract greater developer and user base.

GDAL has a quite usable Python API and is great for getting Geographic Rasters into code for manipulation. So with some help from Frank Warmerdam and following the minimalistic tutorial I wrote a driver for the PALSAR Complex Level 1.1 products. Level 1.5 products are already supported in GDAL via the generic SAR_CEOS driver. I am planning to add the gcp support to the driver next so that polarimetric processing information can be interpreted in real world coordinates.

Australia Day and JAXA presentation

Happy Australia Day to everyone , well even though it is a bit belated. My neighbour had an ultra noisy party so I could not forget it was Australia day even in my sleep.



I have a chance to go to JAXA to present on the work I did on ALOS-PALSAR calibration. Mostly checking the reflectors were pointed at the satellite and analysing the data in RAT. Here is a sample analysis result and the location where the reflectors were. They are of course not there anymore.