Accelerating remote sensing visualization with

WebGL

Trevor Clarke

Opticks Developer

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

tclarke@ball.com

http://opticks.org

Non-literal remote sensing

• More than just pictures• Spectral

• Calculate statistics and visualize relationships

• LIDAR• Dynamic 3D visualizations

To the cloud

• Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this in a web browser?

To the cloud

• Maybe we can• WMS – Context maps• WCS – RAW data• WPS – Process execution

To the cloud

• Doesn’t help with LIDAR• Spectral display often need lots of

“tweaking” to find proper thresholds, etc.

To the cloud

WCS WPS WMS

Adjustthreshold

Desktop solution

• A typical solution for desktop apps is to calculate the results data once and just change the display• This is quite fast when all display

operations happen in RAM and/or on the video card

A solution for the browser

• Calculate the results data once with WPS and transfer with WCS

• Perform visualization and compositing with Canvas/WebGL

A solution for the browser

WCS WPS WCS

WebGLTextureadjustment

Histogram

A solution for the browser

Includes material © 2010 DigitalGlobe, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Current status

• Proof of concept complete• Partially completed WebGL/Canvas

layer for OpenLayers• Some basic shaders completed

(primarily for hyperspectral)• Threshold• Dynamic color maps

Current status

• Multiple server side solutions being tested• GeoServer for WMS• MapServer for WCS and WPS results• 52north, PyWPS, and Zoo being

evaluated for WPS

Future

• Port to mobile platforms• Little to no WebGL support currently• Shaders and data flow are the same• Java (Android) or Objective-C (iOS)

instead of JavaScript• gvSIG Mini Maps might be a good starting

point

Future

• Same technique useful for LIDAR (and other 3D display)

• Multiple shaders for a variety of display modes available from Opticks (my other project)

Q&A

Trevor Clarke

Opticks Developer

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

tclarke@ball.com

http://opticks.org

Presentation available at http://slideshare.net