A virtual city look ahead: ArcGIS 10 and ArcGIS Explorer 1500

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ArcGIS 10 is close to being released and along with ArcGIS 10 will be a new release of ArcGIS Explorer (build 1500). We're not going to list the new features in the 1500 release yet (and there are some surprises) but we thought it would be interesting to visit one of them - the enhanced capability to visualize virtual cities. Here's an example that team member Mark Bockenhauer shared.

Shown below is what may have been considered state of the art a while ago - extruded building polygons based on height attributes with a little creative color shading thrown in. While not the ideal, this method was low-overhead and complete cities could be authored and served quickly, and viewed efficiently using ArcGIS Explorer.

Using automated capture of building facades and heights and draping them onto buildings is a much more realistic approach that's been possible to do in ArcGIS for while, but has also been somewhat constrained by the overhead of displaying all that data and service throughput.

Shown below is the result of some work that's gone into the ArcGIS 10 3D Analyst (ArcGlobe) and ArcGIS Server globe services. These improvements, coupled with enhancements to ArcGIS Explorer 1500, make it easier, faster, and more efficient to create and view entire virtual cities from 3D ArcGIS services using Explorer.

In the example below facades were captured using oblique aerial imagery (through Pictometry) and then draped onto 3D shapes. The geometry and textures were automatically generated from the imagery, building footprints, and LIDAR (via Pictometry's partner, Precision Lightworks).

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Read more: http://blogs.esri.com/Info/blogs/arcgisexplorerblog/archive/2010/05/19/a-virtual-city-look-ahead-arcgis-10-and-arcgis-explorer-1500.aspx

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My National Parks and ArcGIS Explorer

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On Sunday September 27, 2009, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) began a new video series, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The series, by filmmaker Ken Burns and writer Dayton Duncan (great geohistory author too), explores the birth, growth, and continued evolution of national parks in the United States. From various trailers on the PBS site, it promises to provide inspiration and a call to action for all of us: Participate in and steward these American jewels.

As I explored the Web site I noticed an area where you can share your story and alsocollect park badges. Working through the little app, I tagged and dated “my parks.” Result? I discovered that to date I have experienced 92 of the 391 “park units” in theNational Park Service (NPS) system beginning in 1966 with the most recent in 2007. Nice map app, but I wanted more: What about mapping “my parks” in a richer way with ArcGIS Explorer (AGX)?

As it turns out only 58 of the 391 units are designated as national parks, so I decided to start there. First order of business was searching for data for the parks. Finding bits and pieces, I ended up creating my own database using sources found at Wikipedia and the NPS. (Download nps_parks.csv.)

Launching AGX, I selected the Streets Basemap and then selected “Text Files” in Add Content.

In adding the CSV file, I was prompted to make some setting choices—including Title and Description Fields.

The parks were now on my map.

From there I wanted to do three more things: Modify the symbol and its size, rename the park folder (right click), and save my work.

By holding down the Shift key and selecting all of the parks, I changed the Appearance of all locations at once.

I chose an appropriate icon and increased the size of the symbol for continental viewing.

Before going any further I saved my work (Save As: ArcGIS Explorer Map) with a name like USparks.nmf.

Ready for a little exploration, I moved my cursor over the symbols showing the names of each, and a click on one launched the NPS URL.

Stay tuned: In the next installment we’ll create a subset of the total park list just showing the parks I have explored, and more.

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Read more: http://blogs.esri.com/Info/blogs/gisedcom/archive/2009/09/29/my-national-parks-and-arcgis-explorer-part-1.aspx

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Adding PowerPoint slides to Explorer presentations

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At fortælle en historie - ikke kun med kort men også PÅ et kort ...
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To tell a story - not just with a map but on the map ...
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Explorer's new presentation capabilities are a powerful and very popular feature of the latest release. Like PowerPoint you can create "slides" of your geographic information that you can show and share with others. But better than PowerPoint, the presentation mode uses ArcGIS Explorer so you can navigate, click features to show additional information, toggle layers on and off, and more - all using actual data that may be dynamic or coming directly from your enterprise.

In a previous post we covered an example shown during the ESRI User Conference plenary, and you can view the video of the presentation online to get an idea of what you can do.

You can enhance your Explorer presentation with graphics to create titles, add additional information, and more. And like the presentation shown at the User Conference you can even include PowerPoint slides. Here's how.

First, open your PowerPoint presentation like we have below:

Next, choose Save As, then Other Formats.

From the list of formats, choose PNG as your Save as type:

Note that you'll have the option to save all of your slides as individual PNGs, or just the current slide. We want to add just one of our PowerPoint slides to Explorer, so we'll click Current Slide Only.

Now that we've saved our slide from PowerPoint out as a PNG file, we can add it to ArcGIS Explorer as an image overlay. Image overlays show up in our contents and can be used like any other layer. Choose Add Content, then Image Overlays, and browse for the PNG file you just saved from PowerPoint.

You'll see the image overlay on your map, and can position it in a variety of ways. For PowerPoint slides we recommend the centered or one of the fill options, shown below.

Now your PowerPoint slides are part of your contents, and can be used like any other layer in your ArcGIS Explorer presentation.

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Read more: http://blogs.esri.com/Info/blogs/arcgisexplorerblog/archive/2009/09/09/adding-powerpoint-slides-to-explorer-presentations.aspx

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