Continuous Interaction with TDK: Improving the User Experience in Terralib

Historically, visual display has always played a very important role in GIS applications. However, visual exploration tools do not scale well when applied to huge spatial data sets. More recently, faster processing hardware and more sophisticated computer graphics has been used to improve user experience for geospatial data visualization. Some applications have recently introduced the concept that the user should be able to navigate through the data in a smooth and continuous way without being blocked waiting for data to be loaded, even if this means seeing incomplete data for some time. Google Earth and NASA World Wind are recent examples of this concept. This paper describes an architecture incorporated in the TDK (TerraLib Development Kit) open source API to provide support for applications that want this kind of user interaction with Terralib geographical data.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: GEOINFO
• Authors: Marcelo Metello, Mário de Sá Vera, Melissa Lemos, Leone Pereira Masiero, Marcelo Tílio Monteiro de Carvalho
• Keywords: GEOINFO 2007, Geospatial Data Visualization, Huge Spatial Data, Information Technology, Visual Exploration Tools