WebGL Earth on OpenLayers

[Mohammed Rashad]

It will be nice to have a webGLEarth on OpenLayers. so that we can do
more things than just displaying a globe. Analysis can be done if It
is with OL.

I dont know is it possible or not. Just a small idea

[Petr Pridal - Klokan Technologies GmbH]

Hi,

In general, I would like to share as much code as possible between the
planned OpenLayers 3.0 and WebGL Earth. But the code must be
compilable by Closure Compiler in advanced mode and must be clean and
documented before it is committed to WebGL Earth.
You can port some of the functionality from OpenLayers right now as
well - but to reuse whole stable OpenLayers 2.0 is not a good idea
IMHO.

I am keen to share in the future especially the geo data model,
parsing code for several vector and raster formats, styling, etc.

OpenLayers needs to be back-compatible - running in old web browsers.
WebGL Earth is never going to target old browsers, and it will provide
better performance on platforms with hardware acceleration.

I think the two projects can coexist pretty well in the future and I
am keen to bring them closer together so you can use both in the same
online application if you want to.

The true target of WebGL Earth are mobile devices. The hardware
acceleration will make the panning and zooming as fast that it is
unrecognizable from a native compiled application. In fact the
functionality which is now in WebGL Earth project is practically equal
to the native iPhone Google Maps application - and next to that we
have a simple 3D view.
It is just a question of time until devices from Apple and Google will
support WebGL. Most of the hardware has already OpenGL ES 2.0 support
- only software upgrade of the web browser is necessary.

BTW The Firefox4 beta on Android has already preliminary support for
WebGL - and a tweaked early versions of WebGL Earth is running fine on
it. The mobile Firefox4 is not production ready, WebGL is too young
and slow there, but it is getting better.

We should start discussion with OpenLayers developers about the plans
for OpenLayers 3.0 - probably in the openlayers-dev mailing-list.

BTW If you need geomath for analysis (distances, angles, etc) you can
use the BSD licensed geojs:
http://code.google.com/p/geojs/wiki/GeoReference
I hope that similar clean data model is going to be also part of
OpenLayers 3.0 - hopefully reusable by projects such as WebGL Earth.

Regards,

Petr

--
Petr Pridal
(managing director)

Klokan Technologies GmbH
Bahnhofstrasse 9, Baar 6340, Switzerland
Tel: +41 (0)41 511 26 12
Email: in...@klokantech.com
Web: http://www.klokantech.com/