<gx:AnimatedUpdate> with <TimeSpan>

[stuttsdc1]

For some reason, I couldn't reply directly to this response to a
message I posted many months ago. So I'm re-posting it here.

A while back, I asked a question involving how to control a tour so
that the camera stayed focused on an animated placemark.
There's a few things going on here.

I've tried some tests of showing an animation in a tour w/little
success. Basically, I record the tour, hit the play button in the
animation slider and when I'm happy, I move on or stop and save the
tour. But when I play the tour back, it doesn't show the animation.
Any thoughts?

But the main focus of my question had to do with keeping that animated
placemark (each one has a timespan stamp... about 30 placemarks that
turn on/off in succession to give the appearance of animation)... how
to keep that centered in the screen. I can't seem to do it.

Roman (below) posted a nice response stating I should use
<gx:AnimatedUpdate> but the kml reference wasn't completely clear to
me. Am I using <change> tags? Does a network link have to be
involved? Do I still have to hit play on the time slider when
recording the tour?
I'm not quite positive of the steps to take here and would love any
feedback. Thanks.

(original post and reply below)


-----
Roman N Google employee
View profile
More options Mar 20, 9:02 pm
From: Roman N
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:02:17 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Mar 20 2009 9:02 pm
Subject: Re: Smooth Tour of <TimeSpan> feature
Forward | Print | Individual message | Report this message | Find
messages by this author
Hi stuttsdc,

Have you looked into using <gx:AnimatedUpdate> to animate the
coordinates of the placemark? If you have a set of TimeSpan'd
placemarks, you can also try AnimatedUpdate'ing the coordinates of
placemark 1 into the coordinates of placemark 2, then
AnimatedUpdate'ing the coordinates of placemark 2 into those of
placemark 3, etc.

Regardless of your exact final answer, you'll definitely want to use
<gx:AnimatedUpdate> for any type of smooth feature animation.

Here are the relevant docs:

http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/touring.html#updates

- Roman

On Mar 13, 1:18 pm, stuttsdc wrote:

- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
> I thought I could figure this out in the new 5.0 but am having the
> worst time of it.

> I have a placemark that has a <timespan> stet of tags which animate it
> across the landscape.

> I wanted to make a tour that followed this smoothly. Playing w/the
> tour settings in the option menu didn't help and I had little control
> over it.
> I tried using snapshot views for a duplicate set of marks w/no icon...
> starting the timeline, starting recording a tour... but that doesn't
> work well either.

> I tried making a route w/a line along the path the placemark goes but
> I couldn't quite mesh up the rate at which the placemark moves and the
> speed of the tour.

> I then tried a combination of things using the various tags inside
> <gx:tour>... not much luck.

> I'm sort of stuck

> I think if I wanted to control a tour in and of itself, that wouldn't
> be too difficult. I suppose I could set up a series of placemarks w/
> snapshot views to start and then fix the kml to adjust for how they
> fly from one to another. (right?)

> But getting this to work w/a placemark that itself is animated is
> tough. Any help would be appreciated.

> More advanced but along these lines... how about having the camera
> position to the animated placemarks more or less static (that is,
> placemark is front and center so it looks like the globe is turning
> underneath it.) Make sense?

[Roman N]

Hi stuttsdc1,

Yes, <Change> tags are involved, but you don't need a NetworkLink;
take a look at this interactive KML sample to see what AnimatedUpdate
looks like:

http://kml-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/interactive/index.html#./Touring/Touring.Animated_Updates.kml

Thanks,
Roman

[stuttsdc1]

Thanks, Roman. I've seen that particular demo before but thanks for
posting. I'll look it over a bit more in detail. Though, I think my
situation is a bit more complex. For one, I'm dealing with about 30
placemarks that have timespan stamps. So I'm not sure yet how exactly
to involve the <change> tags (you mention changing placemark 1 to
placemark 2's position, 2's to #3's, etc... but I'm not sure if I
quite get it.)

But my guess is that this would eliminate the need to hit play on the
time-slider while recording the tour...?

Then there's the matter of keeping the camera focused on the icon as
it's animated along the path.

hmmm...

On Jul 24, 6:17 pm, Roman N wrote:
> Hi stuttsdc1,
>
> Yes, <Change> tags are involved, but you don't need a NetworkLink;
> take a look at this interactive KML sample to see what AnimatedUpdate
> looks like:
>

> http://kml-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/interactive/index.html#./...