DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with VirtualEarth

VEToolkit: Virtual Earth Toolkit Open Source Project

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:46:04 GMT

A couple weeks ago I started the new VEToolkit (Virtual Earth Toolkit) Open Source project. This project spawns out of the need for more helpers to make Virtual Earth Map development much simpler, and follows inspiration from the Ajax Control Toolkit. This is a JavaScript library, so it's all client-side code; just like the Virtual Earth AJAX API itself. The project is also meant to play nicely with any client-side, JavaScript library you want to use within your application (such as jQuery, Prototype, etc.)

Load Virtual Earth on Demand

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:21:36 GMT

The Virtual Earth JavaScript control is not small weighing in at 217KB when compressed in Version 6.2. When you require the rich experience of Virtual Earth this size is not an issue, the control is aimed at broadband users and within a few moments of interacting with the map you can easy exceed this with the rich imagery being loaded on demand. But what if your web page only needs to show the Virtual Earth map when a user asks for it or you just want your page to load super fast? You need to load Virtual Earth on demand.

Virtual Earth Concepts - Dynamically Draw Polyline

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:42:24 GMT

In this example we will look at the functionality needed to dynamically draw a polyline on the map. In the example to the right, functionality has been added so that you can dynamically draw a polyline on the displayed map. At the bottom of the map there is a button that needs to be clicked to start the process.

RELEASED: Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper for 6.2

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:45:37 GMT

I am happy to announce that we have an updated version of the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper that is in sync with the update Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2.

Microsoft Virtual Earth to Be Offered With ESRI's ArcGIS Online Servic

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:39:52 GMT

Microsoft Corp. and ESRI today announced that ESRI ArcGIS users will have access to the robust mapping and imagery content provided by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform inside ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server. With Virtual Earth seamlessly integrated into ArcGIS 9.3 Desktop, ArcGIS users are now able to easily add base maps, which feature rich aerial and hybrid views, to perform data creation, editing, analysis, authoring and map publishing with one-click access.

Announcing trueSpace for Virtual Earth 3D Development

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:19:01 GMT

Today is a big day. BIG DAY. As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud! This is going to be a long post - get some coffee and make it diesel. Register and Download trueSpace 7.6 for free.

Virtual Earth: Polygon Search - Is Point Within Polygon?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:58:38 GMT

How to perform a polygon search to determine if a given Lat/Long point is within a given Polygon

Gold Coast : WPF and Virtual Earth revisited

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:59:16 GMT

I worked on a more creative/reusable approach to hosting Virtual Earth in a WPF application. If you have looked at any of my previous samples showing how to host Virtual Earth in a WPF app, you'll recall I was using the WinForms WebBrowser control to host an html page that in turn hosts Virtual Earth. Additionally, I used the WebBrowser control's ability to enable communication between managed code and JavaScript. One of the frustrations with this approach is that when using WinForms interop, all WinForms controls take the highest z-order in your app which means you cannot render WPF elements on top of the map. The other thing that has always bothered me about my sample is although it showed how to implement the general approach, it did not wrap all the functionality into a reusable WPF Virtual Earth control. Good news! I have an updated sample.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on a Map: Part 2 - Import Zip Code (U.S. Censu

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:55:39 GMT

Now that we've Made Sense of the U.S. Census ZCTA ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) files in Part 1 of this series, we are ready to import the U.S Census ZCTA Zip Code data into a database. In Part 2, we'll create database tables and import the Zip Code Boundary data into those tables in a MS SQL 2005 database.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on Map: Part1 - Make sense of U.S. Census Data

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:38:31 GMT

The data I'll focus on here is the Census 2000 5-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) in ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) format. Even though these files are in their own "special" format, described here, they are still just plain ASCII and easily converted into CSV files to be imported into a database. Well, you could look at the ARC/INFO Generate (ASCII) Metadata Cartographic Boundary File Format definition and write a parser that then saves in in a CSV format. Or, you could just download and use the one I wrote for this article.

Encoding Latitude and Longitude pairs for performance

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:17:27 GMT

In Virtual Earth we use lat/lon pairs everywhere, for pushpins, polylines and polygons but also for map bounds like the current view. This article aims to look at a better way to store and transmit these values. The encoding algorithm used is from Google maps. You will find an explanation of how and why we use it for Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom (some Examples + Source Code)

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:09:53 GMT

Some great examples of Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom!

Web.Maps.VE 2.0 Released - Virtual Earth ASP.NET Mapping Server Contro

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:53:36 GMT

Today, I released Web.Maps.VE v2.0!! If you aren't familiar with Web.Maps.VE, it is the industries first ASP.NET Virtual Earth Mapping Server Control. It enables you (the developer) to implement MS Virtual Earth mapping into your ASP.NET web applications by writing only server-side code; there is absolutely no javascript required. It has never been easier to implement MS Virtual Earth mapping.

Silverlight Virtual Earth, Part 3 Project "Deep Earth" launches

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:52:08 GMT

Today we launched project "Deep Earth" on codeplex. This open source project will bring together skills from developers all over the world to continue this concept and ultimately create a useable Silverlight control. Seven people have joined the fun: Shaun Becker, Jonas Follesø, Bronwen Zande, Darko Radiceski, Nicolas Boonaert, Rob Farley and myself John O'Brien. What a great mix of people!

Silverlight Virtual Earth, Part 2 MultiScaleTileSource

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:59:36 GMT

The feedback from Part 1 has been great! There is definitely interest in this. Shaun Becker sent through this gem that removes my proxy server completely! Yes we now have Silverlight Deep Zoom talking directly to Virtual Earth! And better still I can give you a live demo (need SL beta2 installed - click image to view):

Silverlight Virtual Earth, Part 1 using Deep Zoom - Sample

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:58:15 GMT

Silverlight and Virtual Earth are made for each other, but how best do we go about creating a Virtual Earth control in Silverlight? First up lets look at utilising the existing Deep Zoom control to serve up the base image tiles. In this proof of concept we have little more then a stock MultiScaleImage control hooked up to some appropriately created configuration XML, the output is only 6.8KB for the client! And check out the results on video:

The Thirsty Developer 23: The Virtual Earth Edition

Thu, 29 May 2008 02:26:28 GMT

In this show, we talk with Chris Pietschmann, a developer and a Microsoft MVP on the Virtual Earth platform. Chris tells us how he got started on Virtual Earth back in the beta of version 1.0 and gives us a good overview of the product.

VE Sessions at Where 2.0

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:20:19 GMT

Chris' session was a deep dive on the Virtual Earth Platform and goes into some details about our UltraCam digital aerial camera that we use to capture imagery. He also talks about how we create 3D models and some cool demos as well on Virtual Earth. Finally he does the Silverlight VE control demo that he showed at MIX 08. Steve's session went deep on the Collections stuff that he works on in the Virtual Earth team. He also showed some of his favorite Map Cruncher Collection demos as well as others. There's also a little surprise at the end of this video that if you were around three years ago when Virtual Earth was created you might have seen.

Querying data based on screen bounds? Use a standard grid.

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:10:57 GMT

Previously I simply passed the current bounds to the server, it got the data I needed and passed it back - all was good. The issue was scalability, as hundreds of requests are made these bounds were very unique even if the data they wanted to show was the same. The solution? Create and oversize a standard grid bounds. What this does is makes many more requests identical. It also has a side benefit that slight movements of the map don't even a trigger a new data request.

Virtual Earth 3D: Installing Plug-Ins

Sun, 04 May 2008 03:17:49 GMT

Some types of plug-ins feature special data or rendering, and are intended to be used with a particular website. Others are intended to enhance the experience of all websites, and run every time a user runs VE3D. Most of the samples given so far have been about the former, where the test html page references the plug-in you wish to load. Today we'll talk about the latter. In addition, there is currently a limitation that plug-ins must be installed in the GAC in order to run. This is true regardless of what category the plug-in falls under. End users of a plug-in will need a way of installing the plug-in. Fortunately writing an installer is easy with Visual Studio.

NEW RELEASE: Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper

Sun, 04 May 2008 03:04:35 GMT

I am happy to announce that we have a new release of the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper to bring Intellisense in sync with the new Virtual Earth Map Control 6.1.

Updated Virtual Earth Map Control demo code

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:55:42 GMT

I've update my primary Virtual Earth (VE) map control demos. If you aren't familiar with my VE demos, they are essentially all the samples from the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK redone in a Visual Studio solution. My directory structure maps almost identically to the steps treeview in the Interactive SDK:

FindNearRoute with Virtual Earth 6.1 and SQL Server 2008

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:51:32 GMT

Just last night we released a minor update to Virtual Earth. Besides the fact that we can now generate the tokens for the Customer Identification and thus the transaction counting not only in the production- but also in the development environment we return now the complete route-geometry when you calculate a route. This feature is considered to be a 'premium feature' and is only available to enterprise customers who use the customer identification. Having access to the route-geometry allows us for instance to have multiple routes on a map... ...or together with a spatial-enabled database such as SQL Server 2008 to implement a feature which returns points of interest in a buffer around a route. Let's have a look at the latter.

Virtual Earth: Center Map to Shape during OnClick Event

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:40:45 GMT

Here's a short, simple example of wiring up Virtual Earth to zoom/pan the map to showing the best fit to center on a specific Shape object that is clicked on by the user.

Virtual Earth: Restrict Map to Specified Viewable Area

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:37:59 GMT

This example demonstrates the ability to restrict the viewable area (and impose map boundaries) of a Virtual Earth map to be within a specified distance from the maps original center point (at time of initial load), and restrict to a maximum zoom level. Why might you want to do this? There are times when you may want to restrict your users from possibly getting "lost" when viewing your data on a map. Also, you may want to restrict the user from panning around the globe in an attempt to reduce the number of Virtual Earth Map Transactions that you'll end up paying for. Whatever the reasoning is; I've actually had this functionality requested a few times by clients, so I thought I'd write up a simple example.