Animation seems buggy

[Phil Puccio]

Hi,

I've got a KML file with GroundOverlays that show an image changing
over 5 time spans. When I click the Play button on the time slider,
the slider moves quickly to the right and goes from showing the first
image to the fifth image. I have to manually move the slider slowly in
order to see the intermediate images, and after I do that if I click
Play, then the animation shows all 5 images properly.

Is this a bug in GE or have I set up my page or KML incorrectly?
Here's the page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40647264/GE%20Super%20Overlay%20with%20Animation.html

And how do I control the speed of the playback? I've tried
ge.getTime().setRate() with various values, but nothing appears to
affect the speed.

Thanks very much,

Phil

[Josh L]

Hi Phil,

Google Earth needs to fetch your images before it can display them.  When you hit play, the client attempts follows the URL to your images, but depending on their size and the bandwidth of the end user it may take a while for them to arrive.  Once they have been fetched and are in the local cache, the next time you hit play they will display instantly.

There are a few workarounds, ranging from including the images in the same KMZ, or preloading them (for example by setting them as a very tiny and almost totally transparent overlay) before you hit play, amongst other options.

As for setting the rate of the virtual clock, please see http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/#internal_clock_rate for a working example.  If you're still having trouble, paste a link to your code along with the values you've tried passing in.

Cheers,

  -Josh

[Phil Puccio]

Thanks Josh.

I have a couple of follow-up questions.

If I put everything into a KMZ file, then will the entire file have to
be loaded before anything can be displayed? My test case uses only 21
images, but in actual use I might end up with thousands of images, so
I am concerned about the performance of this approach.

And if try your preloading suggestion, it sounds like I would first
load a much smaller version of each image, but then wouldn't there
still be a delay (or the same buggy animation behavior) when I try to
display the correct images? And how would this preloading scenario
work if I was to use a KMZ file?

Thanks very much,

Phil

On Feb 1, 1:27 pm, Josh L wrote:
> Hi Phil,
>
> Google Earth needs to fetch your images before it can display them.  When
> you hit play, the client attempts follows the URL to your images, but
> depending on their size and the bandwidth of the end user it may take a
> while for them to arrive.  Once they have been fetched and are in the local
> cache, the next time you hit play they will display instantly.
>
> There are a few workarounds, ranging from including the images in the same
> KMZ, or preloading them (for example by setting them as a very tiny and
> almost totally transparent overlay) before you hit play, amongst other
> options.
>
> As for setting the rate of the virtual clock, please

> seehttp://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/#internal_clock_ratefor a

[Phil Puccio]

Hello again Josh,

I've created a kmz file that includes all the images, but the
animation problem still occurs.

Can you take a look and let me know whether I've set it up correctly?
The files are all publicly available beginning at
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40647264/GE%20Super%20Overlay%20with%20Animation%20using%20KMZ.html

Thanks,

Phil


On Feb 1, 1:27 pm, Josh L wrote:

> Hi Phil,
>
> Google Earth needs to fetch your images before it can display them.  When
> you hit play, the client attempts follows the URL to your images, but
> depending on their size and the bandwidth of the end user it may take a
> while for them to arrive.  Once they have been fetched and are in the local
> cache, the next time you hit play they will display instantly.
>
> There are a few workarounds, ranging from including the images in the same
> KMZ, or preloading them (for example by setting them as a very tiny and
> almost totally transparent overlay) before you hit play, amongst other
> options.
>
> As for setting the rate of the virtual clock, please

> seehttp://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/#internal_clock_ratefor a