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ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

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Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#11

Post by camus »

robhawkes wrote: post #8
aw3c2 wrote: post #7

> If I'm to be honest, after compiling and writing this entry I'm actually in a state of disbelief about how much we've managed to get done in such a short space of time. That is the magic of having and utilising the power of free and open-source software. Imagine not having three.js, QGIS, PostGIS etc. Gorgeous work and a highly interesting "how we are doing it" insight. Thanks! Please more!

You're entirely right. What I've learnt most about this project is that by utilising and combining free data and software you can quite quickly knock up something amazing. However, free and open stuff doesn't fix performance and all the little detailed issues that took up most of our time this past month. I'm glad you like it, we'll make sure to write up more as we progress.

By the way , i'm reading your canvas book and making a framework out of it ;) , though i'm not using javascript direclty but Haxe.

Keep on the awesome work.

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#12

Post by robhawkes »

camus wrote: post #11
robhawkes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're entirely right. What I've learnt most about this project is that by utilising and combining free data and software you can quite quickly knock up something amazing. However, free and open stuff doesn't fix performance and all the little detailed issues that took up most of our time this past month. I'm glad you like it, we'll make sure to write up more as we progress.

By the way , i'm reading your canvas book and making a framework out of it ;) , though i'm not using javascript direclty but Haxe. Keep on the awesome work.

That's awesome! Always chuffed to hear about people benefiting from the book.

And likewise, sounds like you're working on cool things too ;)

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#14

Post by ameen »

Excellent! Love the blog post. And ViziCities already looks beautiful. I can only imagine how wonderful it's going to be once a lot more vectors (population, vehicles, weather, energy, etc) are added in.

Would a simulation component be added in? Cause if it is, It'll be nothing short of awesome.

All the best!

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#15

Post by robhawkes »

ameen wrote: post #14

Excellent! Love the blog post. And ViziCities already looks beautiful. I can only imagine how wonderful it's going to be once a lot more vectors (population, vehicles, weather, energy, etc) are added in. Would a simulation component be added in? Cause if it is, It'll be nothing short of awesome. All the best!

Thanks!

We've been thinking a little about simulation and, although not likely for the first release, it's something we'd love to explore in the future. It's not a huge step to go from our basic AI to a full-on simulated game-type world.

We're not ruling anything out.

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#16

Post by chime »

> Unfortunately, in our efforts for global domination we quickly discovered the performance limitations of the project as it stood, as well as my personal knowledge with Three.js and WebGL. In short, the expanded version of London ran at a horrible 20–40fps depending on the system you viewed it on.

You got a lot farther than me when I tried Three.js before hitting performance problems. I was trying to make a WebGL 3d warehouse visualization app: http://chir.ag/projects/wh/ and stopped because it was too slow once I loaded 1000 bins. I also never quite figured how to handle rotation/panning nicely (src: http://chir.ag/projects/wh/main.js). I came up with a shorthand http://chir.ag/projects/wh/bins/wh.txt that expands to http://chir.ag/projects/wh/bins/bins.php - I was going to make it an easy to use app where you could describe how the warehouse was organized with 20-30 lines of bin#s and positions and let the system generate the rest. Then it could parse APIs containing various properties per bin (full/empty, inventory amount, frequency of usage, days-since-last-used etc.) Clicking on any bin would open up a panel with more information and you'd have filtering/highlighting capability for the whole warehouse.

I made good progress initially but got busy with life and never got around to solving the too-many-bins problem. I still don't know how to improve the performance. Even when entire objects are outside the view, they still take up resources and time. I see you mentioned LOD support in Three.js - no idea if it would help me or not because each object is already as simple as it can be - just a box.

If someone wants to hack on this and make it functional, I'll help however I can.

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#17

Post by robhawkes »

chime wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in our efforts for global domination we quickly discovered the performance limitations of the project as it stood, as well as my personal knowledge with Three.js and WebGL. In short, the expanded version of London ran at a horrible 20–40fps depending on the system you viewed it on. You got a lot farther than me when I tried Three.js before hitting performance problems. I was trying to make a WebGL 3d…

Any chance you could put that up / a version of it up on jsFiddle or something so I can edit it online and see how I can help? There's a few techniques that I could play with. 1000 objects should be silky smooth…

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#19

Post by robhawkes »

gmac wrote: post #18

Looks awesome. The Kinect could be a fun way to explore your visualizations -- seen here hooked up to Google Earth: https://github.com/jawj/pigeonsim Also, I'm sure http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa would love to hear from you.

Thanks George. I replied on Twitter but worth saying here also…

I saw Pigeon Sim via Andy @ CASA the other day, it looks like awesome fun! We'd also like to play with Leap Motion and create something similar to the Google Liquid Galaxy stuff.

Quite keen to work with CASA, I'm sure there is a tonne that we can help each other with. I told Andy about the project a while back but that was before we had anything visual. I'll try pinging Andy again, unless you have another suggestion?

Re: ViziCities Dev Diary #1: Visualising Cities in 3D using WebGL

#20

Post by chime »

robhawkes wrote: post #17
chime wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in our efforts for global domination we quickly discovered the performance limitations of the project as it stood, as well as my personal knowledge with Three.js and WebGL. In short, the expanded version of London ran at a horrible 20–40fps depending on the system you viewed it on. You got a lot farther than me when I tried Three.js before hitting performance problems. I was trying to make a WebGL 3d…

Any chance you could put that up / a version of it up on jsFiddle or something so I can edit it online and see how I can help? There's a few techniques that I could play with. 1000 objects should be silky smooth…

Absolutely! Give me a few hours and I'll have it up. Thanks for the offer. Also it ended up being 6000 objects because a box is 6 planes. I wanted to reduce that to only visible planes but because boxes could be partially translucent depending on some property and be selectable when clicked, it would look weird if inside sides were missing.
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