Changes in GeoZui3D 3.5

These are the changes in GeoZui3D version 3.5, since the release of version 3.4.

Infrastructure

• The ability to handle temporally registered data has been introduced. Not all aspects of GeoZui3D recognize time, but time will be integrated more and more into GeoZui3D with future releases. The most visible effect is a Time Control Panel that appears on the bottom of the GeoZui3D application window when a time-aware object is loaded. The interface documentation does not yet reflect this panel, but does give a short description of Time and the gztime command.
• Hierarchical arrangement of objects is now supported to a limited extent. The most visible manifestation of this is in the new hierarchical listing of objects in the Object Panel.
• Objects can now be edited and many (but not all) objects can be saved to reflect these edits. For instance, GUTMs converted from lat-long can be saved in UTM coordinates, and GUTMs can even be saved with holes cut in them from the fusion process. Points (.gdp) and lines (.gdl) can be edited and saved as well.
• The default colormap has been changed to something more reasonable for map-like coloring. It is optimized for data with wide ranging values, both above and below sea-level.

Interface

• Rendering of GUTM's has been accelerated and now renders more in higher-resolution during interaction than before. Just how much gets rendered is controlled by the setting of the scripting variable interactivityHint. This variable can be set through the "Options->Interactivity Hint" menu item as well (not documented yet). The old rendering mechanism can be obtained by using the "highres" tellObject command for any GUTM.
• Mouse features
  • Clicking in "empty space" with the middle mouse button in previous versions would not cause a window to translate, but would still allow zooming when the mouse was pushed forward or backward with the middle button down. Now GeoZui3D treats such a click as a desire to move to a new location on the X-Y plane in which the center of workspace is currently located. Thus, unless the pitch of the window is near 0, any click of the middle mouse button will cause translational motion.
  • Zooming can now be accomplished alternatively through the scroll-wheel on mice that are so-equipped.
  • An object can be edited by right-clicking on it and selecting "Allow edit" from the menu. Most objects are moved by their LOCAL_ORIGIN point, although individual points within some objects (.gdp and .gdl) can be moved. When an object allowing edit is clicked, edit widgets appear. The green points and lines control the height (Z-level) of a point or object, while directly selecting a control point moves the point within an X-Y plane at the current Z-level. Object supporting heading rotation and scale have addtional widgets for controlling these aspects (pitch is not editable through the GUI yet). Points and lines can be added/deleted using various combinations of the keys, and the arrow keys can be used to navigate through points and lines (see below). To keep an object from being inadvertantly edited, select "Disallow edit" from the object's right-click menu. Editing features are not yet reflected in the documentation.
• Keyboard features
  • Height exaggeration is now instantaneous, rather than requiring time to recalculate normals.
  • An experimental 3D cursor feature is enabled by pressing the 'c' key on the keyboard. If you accidentally hit it, press the 'c' key again to make it go away.
  • The 'o' key on the keyboard puts a window into a orthogonal rendering mode. Pressing the 'p' key puts the widow back into the default perspective rendering mode. Caveat: interaction in orthogonal rendering mode is unrefined and buggy--it is intended for temporary uses or uses which do not require much more than the basic interaction required for navigation.
  • When editing a point (.gdp) or line (.gdl) object, the following keys are mapped to the following actions. To change the current point index, use the left and right arrows. To change line index, use PgUp and PgDn. Height is changed using the up and down arrows. Ins and Del can be used to insert and delete points, with modifier keys--Shift causes an insertion/deletion to occur after the current point (versus before/at the current point), while Cntrl causes an entire line to be inserted or deleted.
  • The '9' and '0' keys on the keyboard act similarly to the '{' and '}' keys for controlling cyclopean scale. This was done to support certain international keyboards that lack the '{' and '}' keys.
• New windows
  • An undocumented color key window can be displayed by pressing the "Key" button on the Objects Panel. The color key window displays a color key representation of the selected color lookup table (.clut). The number and arrow keys can be used in various ways to change the spacing of height labels, but this window is better-controlled through the scripting interface.
  • Undocumented attribute panels can be displayed in a couple of different ways. These panels allow you to view and alter posable (x,y,z, etc.) information for an object as well as certain of its attributes. A panel for a specific object can be brought up by right-clicking on the object and selecting "Attributes" from its menu. A more general-purpose panel, reflecting whatever is currently being edited, can be brought up by selecting "View->Edit-Target Attributes" from the main menu. Especially for the edit-target attribute window, it is usually a good idea to check the "Update continuously box". You can change a value simply by editing the value in the appropriate field and either pressing the return key or clicking somewhere else on the screen.
• Tethers on subwindows can now be made to disappear, and only appear when they are most likely to be needed. This can be enabled by unchecking the "Options->Static Subwindow Tethers" menu item.
• Some icons have been created to represent object types in the Object Panel. Adventurous users can modify or add the .gif files in the bin/bitmaps directory to update these representations.
• Progress dialogs appear during loading of some objects types that are prone to long loading times. More will likely use these dialogs in the future.

Objects

• Scene files are migrating from the legacy Scene (.sdv) format to the new XML Scene (.gzx) format. All scenes saved by GeoZui3D are saved in the new .gzx format. The new format allows other scene files to be referenced for loading. It also allows some objects to be defined within the scene file itself. For instance, Chart objects can be created as in a single line of the .gzx format, while a netCDF file (.nc) can be interpreted into several objects (to support tides or flow visualizations) using several lines of the .gzx fomrat. In addition, scripts can be embedded or sourced anywhere in the loading process.
• DEGRADATION syntax is now common to all objects. Any object that degrades can have its degradation turned off, or at least minimized (GUTMs still degrade with DEGRADATION OFF, but to a much lesser extent).
• Some minor format additions have been made to certain objects, especially the Data Points (.gdp), Data Lines (.gdl), and Data Triangles (.gdt) objects. The most notable change relates to support for user-defined DATA fields that can be accessed from within GeoZui3D as object attributes. Conversion Grids are now more flexible in what inputs they can understand as well.
• A Label (.label) object has been added, allowing bitmap text to be rendered in scale-dependent manners.
• A Chart class has been added (created inline in .gzx files only). Charts display geo-referenced pictures that can have holes punched in them by fusing with GUTMs. This is especially useful for flat maps or charts.
• A Tide class has been added (created inline in .gzx files only). Tides modify an existing GUTM using time-referenced offsets that correspond to the current GeoZui3D time. This is especially useful for visualizing the effect of tides on a piece of bathymetry.
• A Time-varying GUTM class has been added (created inline in .gzx files only). Time-varying Gutms are useful for showing surfaces that change significantly over time, such as with glacial ice flows or morphology changes between surveys.
• Limited NetCDF support is available in .gzx files for certain objects. Currently, only the Flow object can be loaded in this way. The Flow object provides a visualization of flow using numerous tracers that animate with the progression of GeoZui3D time.
• A new Vessel object has been added that allows a boxy ship of specified dimension to be represented in the scene with a pseudo-"course-made-good" line.

Automation

• A new, gztime command has been added for controlling the flow of time in GeoZui3D with respect to real time.
• The "gz tellObject" syntax is now valid for any addressable entity in the address hierarchy. Many objects have additional tellObject commands that they support.
• Events, Event Mediators, Interactors, and Event Handlers have all been added to the address hierarchy and can be controlled and manipulated via scripts. Internal GeoZui3D handling of events can be controlled through the new event script infrastructure, and new events and event handlers can be created.
• New Togl-Window subcommands have been added, including clippingPlane, inParent (for controlling how a proxy is represented in a parent window), localHeightExaggeration (for setting height exaggeration only in one window), perspective (for setting whether orthogonal or perspective projection is used in a window--interaction in orthogonal mode is unrefined/buggy), and wireframe (for rendering all objects in wireframe only in one particular window).
• Documentation of Composite Objects and their use is now available. Composite objects provide a way of attaching windows to groups of objects, generating events when objects come in proximity, and generating events when boundaries are crossed, among other things. An undocumented set of region management tools (for triggerig events when a posable enters or leaves a nearly-arbitrarily-shaped 3-D region) can be found in bin/scripts/support/region.tcl (with some documentation in the header comments).
• There are two new Animator types: PathAnimator and VectorAnimator. A PathAnimator allows a posable to follow a .gdl or .gdp file, potentially interpolated and potentially temporally-referenced (progress is controlled by the passage of time and the new Time Control Panel). An example of how to use PathAnimators can be found in the bin/scripts directory (follower.tcl). A VectorAnimator causes a posable to be animated such that it heads in a particular direction at a particular speed.
• There are new ColorKey subcommands for controlling the display of the color key.