Map animation

Describes the ways in which you can animate a map.

Provides a brief overview of how you can animate a map.

Lists the techniques used to optimize the performance of maps.

Lists the components that are available for advanced map manipulation.

Explains how to use symbols on maps.

Overview

Map animation allows you to perform such tasks as rotating a map, zooming in for more detail, and loading more data without compromising system performance. You can also add symbols to your map, but this must be done outside the Map Builder using Designer for JViews Diagrammer.

Performance

To provide the required performance for importing and rendering map data JViews Maps makes use of the following techniques:

  • Optimized hierarchical quadtree rendering engine

  • Double and Triple buffering

  • Load on demand and hard-disk and RAM caching

  • Raster and vector map tiling

  • Raster map subsampling

  • Multithreaded environment

The results:

  • Display time when opening the prepared map: 2 seconds

  • Required RAM for display: 16MB, or only 6% of the map data size

  • Zooming in and out: 64 frames per second (FPS) with only 50% CPU usage

  • Panning: maximum 220 FPS with only 30% CPU

  • Rotating Map: 40 FPS

  • Map reprojection: 5 seconds

  • Moving overlaid symbols:

  • 30 FPS for 1,000 objects

  • 5 FPS for 15,000 objects

Map manipulation components

JViews Maps provides numerous advanced components for map manipulation including:

  • Interactive zooming with progressive information display

  • Optimized panning

  • Storage and navigation of Areas of Interest

  • Map rotation

  • Synchronized overviews

  • Current map scale

  • Zoom to area or layer, or fit to zoom

  • Layer, map data, and symbol trees

Symbology

There are facilities for advanced symbology management (creation and animation)

Libraries

You can create specific symbology libraries by:

  • Creating iconic symbols, like airports or military camps, based on either raster, vector, or composite graphical elements.

  • Implementing a basic editor GUI and managing symbol rendering.

Using the specific SDM Renderer, symbols can be natively georeferenced. You can:

  • Drag and drop symbols onto a map.

  • Take full control using the APIs for creation, deletion, and fast animation.

Every symbol is moveable, selectable, and editable. Additionally, symbol groups can be collapsed, expanded, grouped, and ungrouped. There are symbol editing facilities to help you create your own custom symbols, see Developing with design tools>Using the Symbol Editor.