RE: GE problem

[Randy George]

Hi,

 

                I’ve run into a little problem with a GE kml using viewRefreshMode and wondered if anyone has a minute to do a test..

 

                My test sample is here: http://www.web-demographics.com/GoogleTest/usgstile.kml

 

                This kml includes a Region with an LOD so it won’t show up until zoomed to roughly county level, but inside the icon bubble of any USGS index tile is a DB view that includes a link to an additional kml producer with a GroundOverlay wrapping a link to Terraserver’s DRG WMS. This allows the user to click open a terrain clamped DRG on top of GE terrain which is all nice on my system using GE 4.2.0205.5730. However, another GE user has no success opening my little test usgstile.kml?

 

I don’t have much experience with GE due to the proprietary licensed nature of life, but I’m baffled why two GE clients have different results. I know there are some GE gurus on the list who could probably set me straight right off.

 

 

Thanks

randy

[Dane Springmeyer]

Hi Randy,

I'm no GE Guru, but I had a chance to test your usgstile.kml: I'm running 4.2.0205.5730 on Mac OS 10.5.

The LOD loading works great and the download of the drg worked as well(although the 'icon-poly.png' is not found in the tile index layer).

All I noticed is that once a set of index tiles were loaded into GE from geoserver, moving to a new location in GE did not predictably reload the network link to Geoserver very quickly. Sometimes it took 5-10 seconds (perhaps some server hiccup?) So, perhaps your other tester just did not wait long enough at the right zoom level?

What's strange is that manually forcing a refresh (by right clicking on the "WMS USGS quad tiles" layer and choosing refresh) seems faster than the <viewRefreshMode>onStop</viewRefreshMode> parameter.  Manual refresh reloaded the correct index tiles with a new bbox more promptly (1-3 sec). 

Dane

[BrianT]

Randy:

Here are the two most common issues we've had--

1) Users still using Google Earth 3.x which doesn't recognize KML 2.x
tags such as <Region>. It's been two years since Google Earth 4.x has
come out, but you'd be surprised how many folks still have their
original download.

2) This may not be relevant to your scenario, but we've also had
problems with filled polygons and graphics cards. Filled polys add a
lot of stress and we've seen OK machines just shut down GE
altogether. A partial fix is to get the Windows people to switch from
DirectX to OpenGL.


Thanks,

Brian

[Randy George]

Hi Dane,

 

                Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad to hear it mostly works on a Mac.

 

                I was playing with the brand new GE 4.3 this morning and noticed some further anomalies. After the first usgstile generation the <viewRefreshMode>onStop</viewRefreshMode> seems to be disabled until the subtree menu is opened and refreshed. From that point on the ‘onStop’ refresh is enabled?  Strange behavior.

 

                I also noticed the difference between onStop and manual refresh load times. My <viewRefreshTime>1</viewRefreshTime> but the delay seems longer than 1 sec for the progress animation on the menu to start. I dropped to 0.5 which seems better. The server here is a bit old which could account for slow performance on the WMS calls against PostGIS. I will need to try it on an EC2 instance and see how much it helps.

 

On the icon*.png:

                I have several versions of geoserver with this kml pointing at geoserver1.6.3 which accounts for the icon*.png lack. Geoserver generates the png references against ‘geoserver’ not ‘geosever1.6.3’. The default geoserver is back at 1.3.2. I just had to move the new .png files to the default geoserver to get that working. I’ll have to look at geoserver and see if I can change the default icon ref generated by the kml format. It would be nice to generate my own 'icon-poly.png' as a thumbnail or at least have control over the geoserver generated href.

 

 

Thanks

randy

[Randy George]

Hi Brian,

I think this user has GE 4.0 Curiously, his error message appeared
in the IE browser before even opening GE. I'm guessing some popup cache
issue but it's always hard to tell over the phone.

Yes the cool terrain flying definitely requires some GPU capability
but I'm not sure switching to OpenGL is an option for most MS IE folks.

Thanks
randy

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