NASA World Wind Java – Nightly builds available

Fresh news from Tom Gaskins lead developer of World Wind Java, a nightly build server has been made available to the public, he also explains why SVN is not currently viable for the project.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s been difficult to find time to get the code into a solid release state and do a formal release. Our sponsors keep our small team very busy developing new features. To relieve your frustration and ours, we’re making the daily development code available. We don’t consider this a release, just a code drop so that you can be fully up-to-date with ongoing development.

The daily code drop, hereafter posted nightly, is at http://builds.worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

Patrick will soon post a summary of features we believe are new since the 0.5 release and refresh.

What remains to make a 1.0? Final definition and clean-up of the API, both the public and the protected interfaces, documentation, and resolution of important issues that users have identified in our bug tracker and on the forum. We do intend a 1.0, but don’t know a delivery date yet.

Some will ask why we don’t put the code under source control on SourceForge or somewhere else. The reason is that our sponsors rely on the consistency and correct operation of the daily code and want zero possibility of unauthorized modification, and we are required to minimize the possibility that code that is not supposed to be made public remains out of the public releases. The system we’re announcing today is the best compromise among public and internal needs. (There are likely people reading this who want to argue the point, but please don’t. We’re doing all that we are able.)

Thanks for your continued support and for all the great apps you’re developing. Interest in WWJ is the strongest it’s ever been, and is clearly increasing.

Patrick Murris has also made a list of the changes since the 0.5 release.

Changes from WWJ SDK 0.5 to 0.6 early access – March 6, 2009
————————————————————

– New Airspace shapes and volumes, terrain conformant. See render.airspaces package and examples.Airspaces and AirspaceBuilder
– New rubber sheet images. See util.ImageUtil and examples.RubberSheetImage
– New measure tools. See util.measure package and examples.MeasureToolUsage
– New ‘on-screen display’ layers: ViewControlsLayer, LayerManagerLayer and StatusLayer
– New ContourLine renderable primitive. See examples.ContourLines
– New Web Service Catalog support. See applications.gio

– Data import and installation:
– Local imagery and elevation import into WWJ cache format – see data.TiledImageProducer and data.TiledElevationProducer
– Reading, writing, and discovery of file descriptors for WWJ cache format – see cache.FileStore and data.DataDescriptor
– Discovery and conversion of WWJ.Net cache format – see data.WWDotNetDataLayerSetReader and data.WWDotNetLayerSetInstaller

– New DDS compressor with support for mipmaps – see formats.dds.DDSCompressor

– Icon layer and renderer allow to use absolute elevations, apply horizon and view clipping
– Applet package updated for Sun Next Generation Java plugin support
– Conpound and local elevation models. See terrain package
– FlatWorld example updated with round/flat globe switching code
– Track markers updated – see render.markers package, layers.MarkerLayer and examples.MarkersOrder
– PlacenameLayer updated – see layers.placename package and examples.Placenames
– TerrainProfileLayer new ‘follow path’ mode – see examples.MeasureToolUsage
– Terrain intersection test for Line and elevation. See terrain.SectorGeometryList and render.ContourLine
– On-screen layers display location offset – see layers.Compass, WorldMap, Scalebar…
– New format support: tab, tiff and world file – see format package
– Tiled image layers alpha blending fixed and mipmap support.
– New examples.util package – browser launcher, audio and slides players, image viewer…

– Data driven navigation sensitivity settings – see awt.ViewInputAttributes.
– Redesigned OrbitViewInputBroker as ViewInputHandler – see awt.ViewInputHandler. Improved navigation near the terrain, and made it easier for applications to extend or modify the navigation behavior.
– Sharper image-based surface shapes. Experimental geometry based surface shapes.
– Experimental hybrid tessellator to better handle the poles.
– Improved WMS server
– Image transformation and reprojection utilities. See util.ImageUtil.
– New Ant build structure.
– Collision detection demo.
– New network status host available/unavailable events.

– Refactoring
– Position is now a LatLon subclass

– On hold
– Fog layer produces artifacts with the new tiled image layer premultiplied alpha blending and has been removed
– Remote surface images are being reworked into a more generic scheme

This is a big step forward for World Wind Java and will hopefully encourage more community interaction and contributions, there may be more breaking news from NASA before too long, but I can’t even give you a hint about that yet, so stay tuned.

You can discuss this latest news on this World Wind forum thread – http://forum.worldwindcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21110