Displaying surveys on the web

ChrisJC

Well-known member
The society* of which I am a member has done a number of 3D surveys of some underground places.
We would like to make them available on-line.
It seems there are a few options:
1. Download
2. Browser + plugin
3. Browser
I am heavily in favour of no. 3, but I've never seen it done. 2 is manageable, 1 I am really not keen on.

Has anybody else done it?, what tools did you use?, are they free? what examples are there?

Thanks in advance,

Chris.

* CATMHS - http://www.catmhs.org.uk
 

graham

New member
Hmm

I can also generate vrml files but, despite my best efforts I don't seem to be able to find a plug in that'll display them.
 

graham

New member
More playing.

I have found a program which will view vrml files in a browser window and works with Firefox, haven't tested with other browsers. It certainly wasn't easy to find though it was straightforward to install. The one I installed was called Cortona3D and is available at http://www.cortona3d.com/Products/Cortona-3D-Viewer/install.aspx

It's not as good as using Lox to view vrml files generated from Therion but it's better than nowt.

There were a number of other viewers available, Cosmo Player  Octaga Player    BS Contact  InstantPlayer1 Maybe someone else will have a play with one of those.

 

khakipuce

New member
Have you thought about SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics)? Native in Firefox and an Adobe plugin for IE (which most people have without knowing it - IIRC google maps uses SVG for map overlays).

I imagine it's a bit raw in terms of 3D in the sense that you will have to do a bit of programming or find a good 3D library. The link below gives some simple examples.

http://www.kevlindev.com/geometry/3D/js3d/index.htm
 

ChrisJC

Well-known member
Hmm, thanks for the tips. I will look at VRML and SVG and see how I get on. Thanks also Graham for the example file.

My life is made harder by me running firefox on linux....., but that's my problem!!

Chris.
 

graham

New member
Chris

Don't know if it's relevant or not but Therion also generates SVG files, but only for 2D representations.
 

martinm

New member
ChrisJC said:
My life is made harder by me running firefox on linux....., but that's my problem!!
Chris.

I also do this, so I will try stuff and give you some feedback when I have some. Mel...
 

khakipuce

New member
Had 20mins at lunch time so thought I'd have a quick play with the code from the link I posted. Here is the result for a made up section of cave
http://chris-h.me.uk/svg-examples/svg3d.svg

Ok ... it needs work, but it was dead easy to get some points rendered - in embedded Javascript on the page there is a function callled make_object(), in there just create vertices with x,y,z coords and then use mesh.add_edge(v1, v2); to draw a line between two vertices.

The controls on the page seem a bit flaky (if you drag a control, release the mouse button before moving the mouse outside the control area) and some kind of grid would make it look a bit more 3D, but not bad for 20 mins work.

I have some code for converting Survex bearing/distance to x,y,z coords - which you can have if you want it, but it would not be hard to generate the javascript on the fly in PHP (or something) directly from a Survex (or other) file.

That said, if you want fly-throughs and textured walls, etc, then VRML may well be the answer ...
 

graham

New member
The *obvious* answer is to generate vrml files from survey programs, Therion does that easily, and then use Acrobat to convert to 3D pdfs. However, as implied above Acrobat pro ain't the cheapest bit of software out there. I can't find a cheaper alternative.
 
Although VRML is still very much around as a data format, note that some systems (eg Walls for cave surveys) still generate version 1  ( which is not compatible with version 2, although there are some converters around).  VRML2 (as generated by Therion) has a parallel XML implementation called X3D which has more recent - though not necessarily better - support. X3D viewers can often translate VRML (v.2) to X3D though.

There is a standalone VRML and X3D viewer called Instant Player [ http://www.instantreality.org/ ] - for Linux, Mac, and - if you must - Windows. Associated with this, there appears to be quite a lot of work going on now to implement Web3D [ http://www.web3d.org/realtime-3d/x3d-vrml/html-3d ] in browsers. Web3D is part of the HTML V5 developments, and will allow X3D to be directly incorporated in web pages.

So it looks like interactive 3D surveys (with support for transparent surface overlays) will be going mainstream before too long, which will be better than just static PDFs. Let's just hope support doesn't wither like it did for VRML a decade ago.
 

Al.

New member
I used the "obvious' method. These vrmls came via Compass. Not that I normally use it, it just makes nice looking vrmls.

It's not hard to hand tweak the vrml to put in lines & things.

AC3D is a fairly cheap program <www.inivis.com> that imports & exports several formats and lets you make caves different colours and texture map the sat photo to the surface if you don't want to do it with text inside vrml.
 
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