Short news: WWJDev, BBox unbound, Second Life for data visualization

Thursday, October 12, 2006 (23:44 UTC)

WWJDev? The powers that be at NASA are pushing development of the Java version of World Wind, according to the Earth is Square. As a Mac user, I couldn't be happier. The .Net version's use of ActiveX controls means it still won't run in Parallels Desktop for Mac (SkylineGlobe does) and rebooting into Boot Camp is too much of a hassle. In other words, WWJ frees NWW from platform dependence, while also making it a far more viable modular component of other applications.

KML guru Barry Hunter describes a method of tweaking the info returned by the bounding box in a network link, so that tilting the view does not result in data being pulled from here to the horizon. He explains it better. (Via his own blog, natch.)

This use of Second Life as a means to visualize complex modelling is particularly striking and unexpected to me. Indeed, why not walk around 3D visualizations of data models in Second Life, especially if the datapoints do not need to be constrained by geographic coordinates (in which case Google Earth suffices)? In addition, you get to manipulate the data structure with an object-oriented language using inputs from the web — something not currently possible in Google Earth. I suspect this innovation has the potential to bring Second Life into the boardroom — or rather, to bring the boardroom into Second Life.