WorldKit

[Naryt]

Not sure if this one has been mentioned here before. WorldKit looks like it takes map files and makes them into a pseudo-googleEarth type application.

Kataria is an example of what can be done with little effort.

The project is OpenSource and free to download.

[Anna]

Wow!

That is something for my future website

Thanks a million for posting about it. And its free, I will see what it takes to use it to show my maps.

Anna

[Alistair]

Hello, I'm the guy who did that particular map. I'll try to work up a basic tutorial on how to make use of worldKit at some point over the course of the next week.

[Naryt]

Hello, I'm the guy who did that particular map. I'll try to work up a basic tutorial on how to make use of worldKit at some point over the course of the next week.

Hello Alistair! I actually snagged the link for WorldKit and your map from your message to the NBOS list yesterday. Welcome to the Guild and thank you very much for the offer of a tutorial...we are very fond of tutorials around here!

[mikel]

Hi

I'm the lead developer of worldKit. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Tutorials are useful!

And feel free to join in our discussion group, listed at http://worldkit.org/contact.php

Cheers
Mikel

[Naryt]

Hi

I'm the lead developer of worldKit. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Tutorials are useful!

And feel free to join in our discussion group, listed at http://worldkit.org/contact.php

Cheers
Mikel

Hello, hello! Welcome to the Guild and kudos for crafting worldKit!

[Alistair]

Just an update since its been well over a week now (a month actually)...

I've tinkered with worldKit quite a bit, but don't have anything complex written up as its a fairly simple application to work with and configure. I'm not sure I'll get around to writing up a more complex tutorial as the worldKit site is fairly well documented for anyone with some basic coding familiarity to figure out.

1) Extract the worldKit zip file to a directory (for the purpose of this tutorial we'll use worldKitDir as the directory name.

2) You need to load your map file into zoomify so that it can be processed into layered images for various zoom levels.

3) Copy the directory containing your images into the same directory as the worldKit files you are working on for my example I have used worldKitDir/map_images.

4) Open config.xml in a text editor.

5) Change the value of "displaytype" to "zoomify".

6) Add the following code to the file or modify it as the case might be:

<zoomifydir>map_images</zoomifydir>

7) Specify the height and width of the flash object you intend to use on your HTML page. This directly affects the scaling inside of the flash object. I recommend keeping the flash object sized to the same dimension ratio as the base map itself.

If you intend to add points onto your map to mark various items, I recommend also adding the following to config.xml as otherwise the descriptions will appear as soon as the map loads for a default amount of seconds.

<textinterval>0</textinterval>
<plotinterval>0</plotinterval>

This all in mind, I've been evaluating OpenLayers (reverse engineered and expanded version of Google Maps) for use at by the company I work for and found it has similar functionality, but is much more complex than most of you might find a use for and to my knowledge (still learning it so I could be wrong) doesn't support the zoomified images that reduce bandwidth usage if you have a massive map and won't be viewing the whole thing.

[pyrandon]

I'd love to see a Guild member play with this application--I see lots of potential for it, but fear it is currently over my head. Any takers?

[Rik]

I'd love to see a Guild member play with this application--I see lots of potential for it, but fear it is currently over my head. Any takers?

I tried it, but to be honest it wasn't working for me. I've gone down the Google Earth route instead (following Handsome Rob's lead) - a lot of work but I like the results, particularly as you can tilt the maps horizontally to get a feel for how mountains are developing etc. I blogged about my progress last month, for those who are interested. If only I could work out how to convert a greyscale map into a DEM file and load it into onto the Google globe ...

[RobA]

I tried it, but to be honest it wasn't working for me. I've gone down the Google Earth route instead (following Handsome Rob's lead) - a lot of work but I like the results, particularly as you can tilt the maps horizontally to get a feel for how mountains are developing etc. I blogged about my progress last month, for those who are interested. If only I could work out how to convert a greyscale map into a DEM file and load it into onto the Google globe ...

Rik-

Does GoogleEarth now support external elevation models?

-Rob A>