WorldWind Integration

Overview

WorldWind Java is now providing some nice 3D visualization that can get in the browser, and is very customizable. It's also fully open source, and built on java. This means that at least anyone who installs GeoServer should be able to run WorldWind right away. The WW and GeoServer communities have been pretty separate, so it could be nice to get some more links going back and forth.

Technically there's a few things that could be done. One is supporting the WorldWind formats more directly. They have a special 'dds' raster format, and I think they have their own vector delivery format. They also use some WFS. But it could be good to figure out how to deliver vectors in a fast way direct from GeoServer.

Other things that could be good is to improve the story of connecting from WorldWind to GeoServer. Make that really easy to do. And perhaps make a sort of 'GS Preview' version of WorldWind that comes already configured with layers from GeoServer/GeoWebCache.

Technical details

See http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=49B56A64.3020101%40opengeo.org&forum_name=geowebcache-devel for thread on WorldWind and GeoWebCache integration. Simone points out the best thing to do would be to code DDS output for imageio-ext. See https://imageio-ext.dev.java.net/ That would be a big win, as we'd be able to produce it really quickly. Though that would also require Simone's or Daniele's mentoring help. The other option would be to add it to GeoWebCache, so GWC could take the PNG from GeoServer and convert to DDS. Then the conversion would just happen once.

-- Simone --

The idea of sticking DDS behind image would be making us able to do a few thing afterwards:

possiblity to reuse worldwind caches as geotools/geoserver pyramids and server them via WCS/WMS
possibility to convert world wind caches to other formats like geotiff (many people would use that)
possibility to easily add DDS as a geoserver output format as well, not only geowebcache

--
Past that GWC should also probably have some sort of output for WorldWind like it does for Virtual Earth and Google Maps, a form that WW understands really easily.

The more exploratory side is vector integration, figuring out what worldwind does now, and a plan for getting vectors from GeoServer to WW. Other directions could include some worldwind coding to do some nicer things with GeoServer directly. Maybe use the REST API in some way, let people publish a layer, or maybe do WFS-T editing. That's probably too ambitious for a summer though.