by Arik Katz
12. May 2009 02:09
In our last few SkylineGlobe product releases, we invested a great deal of time and effort developing the interfaces between our products and other OGC open standards, products and data. We began by enabling our 3D client application (TerraExplorer) to add feature layers from OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) and raster and elevation layers from OGC Web Map Services. Next step was adding support for OGC KML and KMZ files. In the latest TerraGate 4.5 release, our OGC Compliant WMS and WFS enable you to share all your map image and feature data with any application that reads the standard OGC WMS and WFS protocols. Our latest TerraExplorer release features a significantly improved KML loader.
Naturally, development of these new features entailed significant resources and time on our side – invariably at the expense of other, seemingly more exciting features. So why, you may ask, are OGC open standards so critical?
It is true that for applications that manage all their data internally, open standards don’t provide any meaningful advantage but many applications today need to communicate with other data sources. Compliance with OGC standards insures interoperability.
Loading OGC layers
Using the Imagery, Elevation and Feature layer tools in TerraExplorer you can connect your 3D application to raster and feature layers, which reside on enterprise or Internet WFS/WMS servers. There is no need to load entire layers, which in many cases can be very large. TerraExplorer streaming modules read pieces of the data according to the current view providing a seamless, uninterrupted viewing experience. The TerraExplorer WMS, WFS and KML loaders allow you to overlay 2D information (like maps or GIS feature layers) onto a 3D terrain with more styling possibilities than the original 2D application. Linking directly to the OGC services provided by your legacy systems saves you the trouble of re-processing the data and insures that your 3D application is synchronized with the organization’s dynamic GIS databases.
TerraGate OGC Services sharing 3D terrain using OGC WMS standard
The obvious next step was to enable you to share your raster and feature data across a network with applications that read the standard OGC WFS and WMS protocols. This was achieved in the latest TerraGate 4.5 release, which unveiled a TerraGate SFS server that provides WFS and WMS services. Now you can load terrain and feature data collected using the Skyline products to your ESRI, Intergraph or Google Earth application, or any other GIS and mapping application that reads these standards.
Sharing 3D terrain using OGC WMS protocol
The new TerraGate 4.5 allows you to add your TerraGate Terrain service as the data sources for the TerraGate SFS server, so that all the terrain databases and Direct Connect projects of the TerraGate Terrain Service are accessible via the TerraGate SFS server. You define which data sources you want to connect to via the TerraGate WMS, which layers in each source, and whether to add each 3D terrain dataset as an Imagery layer and/or Elevation layer. You can also select a format for each layer, which may differ from the original format of the 3D terrain database. The Web Map Service supports both JPEG (signed 8 bit) and PNG (16 and 24bits) format. The JPEG and PNG 24 bits formats are usually used for visualization purposes, while PNG 16 bit is used for delivering accurate elevation data.
