X3D-EarthBrowser
Visualize our Earth in your Web Browser
Pasquale Herzig, Michael Englert,
Sebastian Wagner, Yvonne Jung &
Ulrich Bockholt
pasquale.herzig@igd.fraunhofer.de
Presented at Web3D 2013
EarthServer
• http://www.earthserver.eu/
• Funded by EU e-Infrastructure
– Project Number: 283610
• 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
• http://www.x3dom.org
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.
• pasquale.herzig@igd.fraunhofer.de
• http://www.earthserver.eu
• Questions?
• More technical details in the paper.