So let's start with the question: Isn't WhirlyGlobe-Maply already 3D?
3D Minus 1D Equals 2D
Everything WhirlyGlobe-Maply does is 3D, but we hide it most of the time. Look at some of the more prominent apps, even ones that use the globe.
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| Dark Sky, Gaia GPS, NatGeo World Atlas |
The giveaway is the gestures. Can you tilt? Nope. And we're not hiding some wealth of information. If you did tilt toward the horizon you'd see.... nothing much.
To be truly 3D an app needs to turn on the 3D gestures and it needs data with real 3D structure. There are a few that do it and we provide a lot of functionality to support them.
LIDAR Point Clouds
Did you know WhirlyGlobe-Maply supports LIDAR in a pageable sqlite format? It does and it's pretty cool.
Available on both iOS and Android in 2.5 this is an essential use of 3D. You couldn't see all that much in 2D... well okay you can, but it's better in 3D.
Truly 3D Terrain
We've been able to do true 3D terrain for years. Aviation apps use it.
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| FlyQ EFB Synthetic Vision Mode |
Why don't you see that more? Well, it's useful for aviation and.... um, games maybe? Users tend to be specialized.
Models, Markers, Billboards, Labels & Lines
The toolkit can display 3D models in Wavefront OBJ, a data format old enough to vote, but it works well enough.
We can also do billboards, which are like a 3D version of markers and, of course, labels. Here's what you'd use that for.
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| NATS Airspace Explorer |
Inspired to make your own 3D traffic app? Of course you are, but it's a lot of work to get the display right and the data is expensive.
General 3D Geometry
Lots of our users make stuff up on the fly. Why? Because if there was a pre-packaged version of it, they wouldn't be making an app.
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| Fake airstrips are fake. Do not try to land. |
For stuff like this we've got a model generator. You build up your special snowflake of a model polygon by text by line as needed.
If you've already got 3D geometry, you can hand the triangles over to the renderer. Hard core, but useful in a few cases.
Lofted Polygons and Extrusions
On the easier side are a couple of features that let you think in 2D and tack on a height.
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| Downright candy colored |
Lofted polygons have been around a long time and work well on the globe. They're nice for showing relative height... and they just look cool.
Extrusions are a way of whipping up a model without having to do, like, math. You can slap together an arrow, for example, to point at things.
Where We're Heading
WhirlyGlobe-Maply has extensive 3D support and real apps (mostly aviation) have been using it for years. It's all rather do-it-yourself though, particularly on the data side.
There are a number of good data sources for 3D coming on line recently. In the next post we'll discuss how we'd like to use them and where we'd like to go.
