Horsham Forum - A Community Forum for Horsham and Southwater Residents and Businesses / Horsham Chat / Horsham Chat / Virtual Horsham / Latest Posts

RE: Virtual Horsham

Horshamite — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:41:53 GMT

Thanks for the explanation. Congratulations on this first. Hopefully it will be another thing to put Horsham on the map - sorry for the pun.

RE: Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:35:24 GMT

[quote][b]Horshamite (12/10/2007)[/b][hr]This is an excellent piece of work. Sorry to demonstrate my ignorance but what determines the boundary of the high-res image? I have never seen such good aerial images of Horsham.[/quote]

Basically the size of my wallet!

No seriously it is really down to cash. Just to explain:

Virtual Horsham is based on Microsoft Virtual Earth. The basic images used on Virtual Earth are a set of aerial photographs that were taken around 1999 by Getmapping plc for the 'Millennium Map'.

Anybody can freely build a web application based on this platform. We originally took this approach for Visit Horsham and Virtual Horsham but it soon became apparent that some areas for the town centre appeared very out of date on the map. As an example go to Visit Horsham and uncheck the "Show High Resolution Images" tick box. If you do this you will notice that the whole of the forum is missing (as is the Pavilions in the Park).

I started to think about possible ways to integrate new photographs into this application and discussed it with other Virtual Earth developers. One option was to commission custom aerial photography for the affected areas but for various reasons this was not really practicable or cost effective.

I then discovered that Getmapping PLC already had some new high-resolution pictures of the Horsham Town Centre area. After some negotiation with them they agreed to license the use of the images for display on the Visit Horsham and Virtual Horsham websites. That was only the start of the problem!

After chatting with other Virtual Earth developers I found that nobody else (worldwide) had replaced Virtual Earth images on this scale before. Fortunately Microsoft make available a free product to developers that will 'slice up' the source image into the many, much smaller images that are needed for Virtual Earth application. Microsoft themselves gave me some direct assistance with this, as did some other Virtual Earth developers. I am very grateful to these people because the result is that we are the first town in the UK to do this and quite possibly the first in the world on this scale. This site has become a model for others looking to do the same and this month I managed to get it mentioned in the prize letter in .net magazine (a national publication sold in W H Smiths etc.)

Anyway back to the cost. There is an initial (size dependant) licensing fee for the new image that has been used. This image has since been sliced-up into about 2GB of smaller images. These smaller images are the ones that you see as you move around and zoom in on the map. The web server has to process these and if multiple users are concurrently online this processing represents a considerable load on the server. If you know a little maths you will appreciate that data stored in these images will increase proportionally to the width times the height of the source image. In other words if you double the width and the height you need four times the data to store it. If we keep increasing the area for the source image we will soon hit a point when a single server can no longer handle the processing. We could overcome this by increasing the server power but it would obviously involve considerably more cost.

Virtual Horsham is effectively being funded by the revenue from the Visit Horsham subscribers so it initially made sense to choose an area that covered the distribution of those subscribing businesses. Currently this just about cost effective.

It would not currently be cost effective to to expand the area covered by the high-resolution images but hopefully in the future we will be able to . It is also likely that at some stage Microsoft will update the underlying images but, if they do, their new images may still lag the latest images that will be available from Getmapping.

Thanks for you interest. I hope this explains things for you.

RE: Virtual Horsham

Horshamite — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:45:23 GMT

This is an excellent piece of work. Sorry to demonstrate my ignorance but what determines the boundary of the high-res image? I have never seen such good aerial images of Horsham.

RE: Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:10:54 GMT

Thanks Clive you are already next on the list after Hidden Horsham. It will be good to combine all these Horsham places of interest on the Virtual Horsham Map.

For various technical reasons (and other commitments) it's taken me slightly longer than I first anticipated to set this up but I hope to get the first data set up and running soon.

RE: Virtual Horsham

clivewalker — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:14:00 GMT

Just to confirm, I'd be interested in a data layer for Horsham Pub Guide. Let me know what map data I would need to provide when you have time .. thanks. Clive

RE: Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:10:09 GMT

Thanks Ni An

Your are right about the way Virtual Earth currently works with most towns. i.e. It simply overlays the 2D 'top down' image over the top of the contoured 3D landscape. You are also correct that this would not work very well with the current, high-resolution, Virtual Horsham images. That is one of the reasons why I left off the 3D option when the new images were added.

I think the long term future is 3D though. Have a look at Eastbourne for a basic idea of the way things are heading. If you view Eastbourne Town Centre at street level in a 3D view, you will find after a while (leave it up to a minute) 3D buildings will start to pop in to view. If you leave it long enough you will eventually see just about every building in the Town Centre and surrounding area in 3D. The buildings are quite simple but are a fairly accurate representation and can be subsequently viewed from any angle.

The simple 3D buildings are automatically rendered by clever software that can interpret multiple 2D images to make a pretty accurate estimate of how the 3D image will look. Hopefully in the near future, Microsoft will allow users to add their own custom 3D images (Google Earth already does this to a certain extent). I am really looking forward to the time when we can do this. I have in the past done a little bit of simple 3D modelling so will be able to add a few of my own buildings. The real power however will be to open Virtual Horsham up to other 3D developers. One use of this would be to preview how Horsham Town Centre may look when new buildings are added. It has a lot of potential.

Sorry the high-resolution images don't quite cover your house. We have had quite a few similar emails. the funniest one was from a football supporter. He was from a rival team who where playing Horsham FC. He joked that Horsham couldn't afford to turf their pitch properly. I wasn't sure what he meant until I looked at the pitch. One corner is high resolution and the other three are low resolution! :w00t:

Hopefully in the future we may be able to expand the high-resolution area but at the moment I am afraid it is too expensive to do so. There is a licensing fee for the images and it also would require a server upgrade to process it.

Thanks for taking an interest! :)

ps hopefully very soon we will have the first additional data layer. I am currently working with HDC on this. If that all works we will be offering free data layers to other Horsham websites - starting with Hidden Horsham

RE: Virtual Horsham

Ni An — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:42:42 GMT

Oh - that plug-in! Yes, I already have it - but it doesn't work very well in towns, does it? It only shows land contours, with the aerial view of the buildings wallpapered over them, so Virtual Horsham is probably better off without it.

Congratulations on a great piece of work - it really is impressive (shame it stops just short of my house ...)

RE: Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:16:54 GMT

[quote][b]Ni An (11/10/2007)[/b][hr]Can't find the "small browser plug-in" for 3D ?[/quote]

Hi Ni An

Thanks for pointing this out. Sorry to confuse you!

When I added the hi resolution images I disabled the 3D option from the Visit Horsham website as it would likely cause compatibility and performance problems.

You can still view Horsham (and the rest of the world) using the Microsoft Virtual Earth maps.live.com website. (note these are the old dated and low resolution (Horsham) images)

Here is a 3D view I saved that focuses on Horsham:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=51.062137~-0.331646&style=h&lvl=19&tilt=-21.0819531328658&dir=60.5041125094547&alt=296.187488243915&encType=1

If you have not viewed this page before you will be prompted to install the browser plug-in.

As I mentioned earlier the Horsham images are not currently the highest quality in 3D. Using the Virtual Earth interface you van view many places that are better represented. Have a look at Brighton or Eastbourne for example (make sure you give the images time to load fully) Switch Back to 2D for great High Resolution Pier!

ps Tip - Hold down the Ctrl key and left mouse button while moving mouse to change 3D angle

RE: Virtual Horsham

Ni An — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:49:24 GMT

Can't find the "small browser plug-in" for 3D ?

RE: Virtual Horsham

The Writer of The World — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:23:44 GMT

Yes very impressive. Wow

RE: Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:43:53 GMT

Hi Graham

Thanks for your comments.

As soon as I get the admin interface up and running I will set you up with a password that will allow your to enter and edit your own pin. This way the pop-up box can be kept up to date with current or future events (like your open day etc.)

Regards

RE: Virtual Horsham

gpmatthews — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:00:42 GMT

Very impressive - although not in the centre of Horsham, what chance a pin for Warnham Local Nature Reserve (I ask wearing my Friends of Warnham LNR committee member hat!)?

Graham

Virtual Horsham

DotNetWebs — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:50:05 GMT

Seeing as I mentioned it in the Purdies Linen Thread I thought it was about time I introduced virtualhorsham.co.uk.

visithorsham.co.uk makes extensive use of Microsoft's Virtual Earth but we have limited its scope in order to ensure the site is compatible with the major browsers and mobile internet devices.

I have recently been experimenting with the more advanced Virtual Earth features available to developers and have created virtualhorsham.co.uk to prototype some of these ideas. By separating it from the main Visit Horsham site we can also include data that is beyond the scope of the Shopper's Guide.

One of the long term plans for this site is to make available an interface that will allow other Horsham related websites to store locations within the database that may be used to display the data as pins on the map. Hovering over these pins will produce a pop up that will include a relevant link back to the originators website.

The goal is to have multiple datasets available to be selected by the website visitor. For instance one click could enable a set of Hidden Horsham places of interest to be displayed with a simple summary and a link back to the main site for more information. M and I had a meeting recently to discuss this in principle and we hope to implement it in the near future.

Anyway so you get the idea here is the first set of data:

www.virtualhorsham.co.uk

Each pin represents a Horsham Business that has subscribed to the Visit Horsham website. Hovering over each pin will produce a pop-up that includes a link back to the Visit Horsham website. This data is automatically generated by the Visit Horsham website. As each new business subscribes it will automatically appear on the map.

If you have broadband and are happy to download a small browser plug in then I suggest you check out the 3D option. This will allow you to view the map from any angle or direction. You can scroll in and out with your mouse wheel of 'drag' the map by holding down the left button while moving your mouse. The images around Horsham are not the highest resolution so if you want some really sharp images have a look at Brighton Pier.

As this is a 'window' into Virtual Earth you can scroll to anywhere in the world. My dad was using it last week to look at a Greek Island and plan his holiday!

Regards