CameraFlight

CameraFlight - osgEarth Camera Transitions

Project Overview

CameraFlight is a plugin for OsgEarth that helps users to navigate OsgEarth. Although the the project is named CameraFlight, the algorithm involves rotating earth and moving earth closer to Camera. There are two types of Navigation; Instant and Satellite. User can choose which algorithm to navigate osgEarth from algorithm sub-menu. Then user can choose one of the predefined destination or go to custom navigation menu and select latitude and longitude of the location and navigate.

• Instant Navigation will show the desired location instantly having user facing down the earth. The algorithm used is by setting the object space matrix to specified matrix that is already saved.
• Satellite Navigation is a navigation style that is similar to Google Earth's navigation. It will slowly zoom out and rotate the earth simultaneously and zoom back in to the destination.

Done

• Create menu for plugin with algorithm submenu; checkbox entries: instant, satellite, airplane
• Create submenu with list of destinations; for starters just use two destinations to switch between (eg, UCSD and China)
• Implement instant switching: switch to destination position immediately without transition
• Implement satellite mode: like Google Earth's transition mode, ~10 seconds for transition, make this time value configurable in CalVR's configuration file
  • Make sure that the transition's duration is time dependent, not dependent on number of frames rendered
  • Come up with math/functions for camera height and for angular motion of camera (=rotation of planet)

Milestones

• Implement camera path
• Implement airplane mode

Participants

Software Developers:

• William Seo

Project Advisors:

• Jurgen Schulze

Development Assistance:

• Philip Weber

• Andrew Prudhomme

Initial Concept Base:

• Google Earth