Open Source GIS solutions gain more and more attention in the Geoinformation sciences community over the past years. Now there are numerous usable and stable Open Source libraries and tools for spatial data management, customization and visualisation available. Open Source in general has a very strong relation to topic of Interoperability and Open GI Standards (e.g., Standards specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)).
The OpenRoutingService.org initiative has worked on the OGC Specification “Open Location Services” (OpenLS) Before the implementation of OpenRoutingService.org several other services based on open standards have been realized. In near futures these implementations should be available at http://www.freeOpenLS.org.
Since April 8th of this year OpenRoutingService.org is accessible online. The services uses free geodata from OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and provides routing functionality based on the OGC LopenLS Route Service Specification. The plan is to provide routing based on OSM also for other software systems or as web service. Currently the service is enhanced in case of functionality, because until now it is limited to Germany. The area of Germany in OSM covers more than 600.000 streets, which must be transformed into topological graphs for the routing module. During this transformation more then 1.3 million features are generated.
They have tested the performance with different routing-libraries (geotools, pgrouting) and algorithms (Dijkstra, A*).
One further interesting feature of OpenRoutingService.org is the “Avoid Area” function. Here the user can enter an area (e.g, dangerous area), which is excluded in the routing process.
[via: Zur Kopplung von OpenSource, OpenLS und OpenStreetMaps in OpenRouteService.org (Neis, P., Zipf, A.)]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
EveryScape is a web service similar to Google StreetView but it allows also indoor navigation. Therefore it is possible to navigate though the streets of an city and go inside buildings along the city. Of course only public buildings are recorded.
EveryScape uses Adobe Flash technology for visualisation.
Excerpt from their homepage:
“EveryScape’s patented HyperMedia Technology Platform allows anyone with a browser to experience a first-person, eye-level walk down a scaped street, gathering and sharing information on businesses and attractions, entering a store and shopping, checking the menu and reviews of a restaurant or the upcoming performances of a theater.”
Currently
EveryScape is in beta and parts of following cities are included:
United States
- Aspen, CO
- Beverly Hills, CA
- Boston, MA
- Breckenridge, CO
- Cambridge, MA
- Laguna Beach, CA
- Lexington, MA
- Miami, FL
- New York, NY
- Philadelphia, PA
- San Francisco, CA
- Snowmass Village, CO
- Steamboat Springs, CO
- Washington, DC
China
Poland
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Two students from Germany have worked on a project called Enkin. The have written this locational service on Google Andriod. Enkin allows to navigate in three differend modes:
- Classic Map
- 3D View
- Reality
Until now the hardware is a little bit cumbersomely but I hope this will change after the first real Android mobiles are on the market.
“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices. This project is a submission for the first round of the Google Android Developer Challenge and should not be considered a final product. If you want to learn about it in depth, please read our detailed documentation.
Link: http://www.enkin.net/
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Recent Comments