Pasquale Herzig, Michael Englert, Sebastian Wagner, Yvonne Jung & Ulrich Bockholt Presented at Web3D 2013 X3D-EarthBrowser Visualize our Earth in your Web Browser

EarthServer Funded by EU e-Infrastructure –Project Number: Open-access, ad-hoc analytics on extreme-size earth science data RTD & services, six lighthouse applications

EarthServer Different domains of earth science with unique challenges - including visualization E.g.: Cryospheric, atmospheric and planetary science, geology and oceanography, etc. Potentially looking for very different things to display

EarthServer Aim: 100+ TB of raster data each Server/Client architecture, OGC standards on top of HTTP as “glue” –WCS,WMS,WCPS –OGC standards development also part of the project Servers designed to deal with big data, clients request manageable subsets This talk: focus on 3D web client

Visualizations in X3DOM Open Source middleware for declarative 3D on the web -> Tutorials yesterday

Web 3D Client Aim: display raster data in a 3D environment on a web page Raster data comes in many varieties –1 to 3 spatial dimensions, optionally combined with a temporal dimension –uniform and various types of non-uniform grids, general meshes etc. –multiple coverages (datasets) sometimes necessary for meaningful results –1 to n channels of different types –... and plenty more...

Web 3D Client Also may need different visualizations of any coverage type. –Planes –Elevation Maps –Point Clouds –Time Series –Volume rendering –... Plenty of “3D widgets” you could think of

Web 3D Client Also, may want to combine different “widgets” in one display And that’s just visualization. There is also interaction Some basics (like navigation) are baseline, but how to anticipate all the custom interaction schemes users might want?

Web 3D Client Now, what is a 3D web client then? In the first year, we made a few prototypes, each addressing a different scenario They all have in common that they display something in a 3D box rather than e.g. on a globe –Internally dubbed the “fishtank”

EOX MultiCoverage

PlanetServer WCS/WMS

WCPS Elevation Grid

Unified Client Our aim was not to deliver just a bunch of semi-related code solving very specific problems. One 3D web client to rule them all. On desktops as well as mobile devices.

Unified Client Our solution: make client modular and split setup and execution Operator gets all the power at source code level to set up the application, may even write custom modules if necessary

Unified Client The unified client consists of –a framework with a module API –modules –UI & tools E.g. a module that has API to setup WCPS call that will request RGBA image and add it to scene as elevation map Framework has composition functionality like transformations and transparency

Unified Client

Underground Radar Data

Side Panels

Operator - Setup Example

User Interface - Using JQueryUI Created automatically Basics for modules – Movement, scaling, transparency.. Settings for light, cameras & annotations Easy to change and to adopt

Progressive Data Transmission Load low resolution data first –Increase resolution after a succesfull query –Add higher resolution when available Quicker feedback for the user The protocols allow to choose the resolution

Video

Summary Web client using X3DOM and no plugins – Except IE (X3DOM Flash fallback) Easy to set up by operators –Few lines of Javascript code Combine data from different sources –Services for e.g. geology and oceanography Combine different visualization types –Elevation map, underground, pointcloud…

What’s Next? Performance –Less Javascript, more shader in X3DOM User Experience –better UI feedback Interaction –e.g. UI for positioning planes and callbacks into application code to handle change events More modules

Thank You! Feel free to contact me or the EarthServer community. Questions? More technical details in the paper.