I am developing a webapp which the most challenging aspect is the 3D model section. It also contains other things such as drag and drop and a sliding bar with arrows each side which the user can go through to select different items.
I have been looking into WebGL but it seems IE doesn't support it without using a plugin. This isn't ideal so I was wondering what other options I have.
Flash? Silverlight? Anything else?
Silverlight is WAY too rare to be used for any meaningful development, and ajax is simply not stunning enuogh. That leaves us with Flash, which in my opinion, is the best of the three options. Flash Player 11 introduces the new Stage3D API which can create pretty stunning 3D graphics. There are also many AS3 libraries for 3D rendering. I prefer Away3D
Just found this, which looks promising.
http://iewebgl.com/
Edit: Disregard, seems the user has to download the executable for it to work.
at the moment flash is most popular plugin for 3D based web apps. which is cross browser, but no mobile browsers support :(
Many technologies and every one have his disatvantages
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I want to create a new application. It will basically be a Deep Zoom application that users can draw annotations on (that will save to a DB so other users can see those annotations.) At first it will just simply run in a browser. However, the app would be useful if it could be used by enthusiasts in the field, so ability to run on smartphones or other handheld devices would be massively beneficial. 3G/4G signal is likely to be practically non existent in those places, so having the ability to download all the images and info for an "area" would be good.
I can't decide on which technology to use. Silverlight Deep Zoom apps look really nice in browsers, but I have heard that it is not a widely supported technology that MS might be ditching anyway and the only smartphones that would be capable of running Silverlight would be Windows phones = a very small share of the smartphone market. Flash will probably never run on iPhones/Apple products in general. So should I use HTML5? HTML5 all seems a little confusing to me at the moment, would it even be possible to make a HTML5 Deep Zoom application that users could annotate?
Any thoughts and advice would be really handy, thanks for reading.
I wrote a Deep Zoom app that supported annotation for a proof of concept a couple of years ago.
I used Django for this, however it is not approach I would recommend. If i was doing the same job again I would use CanvasZoom, which is based on HTML5. Canvas Zoom can be embedded into a webpage through javascript. There is a guide on how to do this here:
a link
Unfortunately you need to run Microsoft DeepZoom composer on the original image first in order too generate the deep zoom data that CanvasZoom will use. If you want your app to run in a browser it is likely that you will have to go for the following approach.
User selects image.
Image gets uploaded to server
Server creates deep zoom information
Use a PHP based approach so you have a canvaszoom page for the image.
The annotations will probably complicate matters, I did this with javascript when I attempted it. The trick is to work out when the image has been zoomed in (with canvas zoom there are preset zoom levels) and redraw the annotation regions. I found this approach non-trivial but not overly complicated.
Canvas Zoom is MIT licensed, so you can do what you like with it.
Good luck with your project.
I've been developing a travel planning site - tripgrep.com - which is built on appengine, GWT and smartgwt, among other technologies. It is still early days, and the site is now working well on my development environment, which is either a windows or mac computer.
However, I am frequently talking up the website to my friends when we are at a bar or other venue, so I am standing there while they try to access the site via an iPhone, Android or Blackberry - I've witnessed all three. It has been painfully obvious that the browser based frontend takes a long time to download on a mobile device. I am pretty sure this is because of the javascript download for SmartGWT.
So, I would like to look at alternatives to SmartGWT.
What I like about SmartGWT is that it has a reasonable look and feel out of the box - I don't need to learn any design or css and it has an office application look. This is considerably better than the GWT built-in widgets, which just get a blue border. The better look-and-feel is why I went with SmartGWT early on. However, the slow load times are killing me on these mobile demos. So now I want a fast loading widget alternative that has good look-and-feel out of the box.
The features I care about are: tabs, good form layout, Google maps API integration, grid data viewing. If those are all available in a library that loads quickly on a mobile device, then that's the library I want.
Your best bet is probably just to use the standard GWT widgets and learn how to style them to your liking. SmartGWT's automatic styling is nice, but as you've noticed, it comes with a price.
Even GWT's standard widgets, which are lighter, could still be trimmed down for maximum speed, so if you're really adventurous you could roll your own light-weight widgets that do only what you need them to do.
You can try mgwt-also called mobile gwt...(available at http://code.google.com/p/mgwt/ )
You could write a wrapper for jqTouch... that would be cool.
Write a seperate View for your model, specifically for either a) mobile devices or b) iPhone speicfically (see "iui" f.ex.). That is the very best way to do it.
I have task to create program for manipulation with 3d content on the web. When I said 3d content i mean
on 3d map (witch i have and it is something like *.sdm) which i should load into browser and work some basic operation with it (rotate screen, change camera etc...).
Because i am totaly n00b i want to ask a couple of questions:
1. How to load maps into browser. Just for notice that my map have sdm extension. Is this possible?
2. What i should use for represent 3d content. I am thinking of GLGE framework for webGL, if it is possible of course
What should be the most painless and the most effective way to do this? Maybe i was totally wrong when choose webGL?
Programs that use WebGL aren't mature enough to do what you want. Within the next few years, when GIS applications start popping up it may be possible, but not now.
Also, keep in mind that WebGL is what gives you access to a low-level graphics library. It does not directly have anything to do with GIS data.
You may want to take a look at OpenLayers (2d, javascript based) or WorldWind-Java (3d, jogl/java based). Both of these programs can display map information in a browser.
http://openlayers.org/
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/
I want to utilise the 3dwall feature of cooliris, the physics effects of the icons in bumtop to design an application for making the image viewing more intuitive and interactive. I dont want to use flash as it would slow down the speed for interaction on desktop. PLease could someone tell me about
choice of
1.) physics engine - physx or ODE for the physics effects like bumtop
2.) opengl or direct 3d
3.) WPF(windows presentation Format) - what is its use
Flash with Actionscript 3 is the best for such things. Checkout http://www.flashloaded.com/flashcomponents/3dwall/ for an illustration of CoolIris type application in Flash.
WPF is great for building application like this. VS2008 doesn't provide solution for good visualization,
but you can always call for help Blend included in MS Expression. There you can select silverlight project for building fancy web applications (silverlight.net/showcase). At start, combining different controls and trigger events to start simulations is entirely included. Yes, inside Blend you can set frame keys like in flash.
It's certainly a lots of effort, but it don't need to be. Recently new set of WIN RadControls for WinForms and Silverlight are issued and they look, believe me, excellent. You can look for Run Demo program which shows example of using these controls. Under section Integration, Carousel and others you will see what you looking for and beyound.
Are there any controls that anyone is aware of that I can use to stream firewire video into a WPF app. I do not need camera control or capture just the video. I need WPF hosting because I'll be adding WPF content on top.
I was hoping that with the addition of having direct X surfaces in WPF something like this might appear.
Ideally looking for something relatively high level (not a direct show guy at all).
Thanks,
Brian
There are a couple really good video rendering packages for WPF. This guy Jeremiah Morrill has a blog where he discusses his numerous render projects. There's the WPF Win32 render project, and a number of low-level techniques he documents for how to access accelerated playback, Media Foundation .NET, DVD controls, etc... I believe his blog is titled "Jer's One Stop Shop".
Reading over his blog in general is a good idea if you are in to video/WPF. Last I checked, "MediaKit", one of his more comprehensive projects, enables easy use of DirectShow (simple xaml and your off and running, so don't worry) and other well known native interfaces. It's very robust and actively maintained, if not that specific project, check into some of the recent API's he's contributing on, some various Win7 media support also.
The only reason I'd bring up this other project, Augmented Reality, is that you remarked about adding content "on top". You should definitely check out wpfAugRel if your doing a lot of video production. Where to get an add on for it eludes me, but I'm sure you can find it off that site, but it allows for you to script in python some fairly slick real-time video production.
-- edit --
Right, look at this google code page, it has some video's (picture's worth a thousand words right?), but regardless, it allow's you to mix in 3D content into live-action, through the use of "marker" prop's, essentially bit's of paper with some easily machine recognizable feature's, that facilitate their underlying engine to inject computer rendered output into a real world scene, highly dynamic, so you can toss these marker's around and the 3D content move's fluidly... anyhow good luck.
Check out this article by UberDemo. It captures video into a WMV file with Windows Media Encoder and WPF. There is a paragraph about how to do the preview in a WPF application.