ArcGIS 9.3.1 REST Services Patch

Another patch for ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 was released. This patch addresses cases where, under heavy load, adding additional SOC machines does not improve performance when using REST services.

Issue fixed with this patch is:

• NIM045052 - Adding additional SOC machines does not improve ArcGIS Server system performance when using REST services.

Even if this does not apply to Desktop or Engine but one of assemblies for Desktop and Engine is affected.

File is GIS931-Server-RestSvcs-Patch.msp and it is 2.1 MB. Full details are available here.

ArcGIS, WPF and Surface in action

Yesterday Richie posted an article and video about “Police dispatcher for Microsoft Surface” application they (ESRI Application Prototype Lab) ported from Silverlight API to Windows Presentation Foundation and Surface.

Go here for full details, video is also available on YouTube.

If you liked that then have a look at similar example “Cross Country Mobility for Microsoft Surface.”

Creating effective web maps seminar

Eagle Technology is hosting a complimentary seminar about creation and deployment of modern web maps maps and make the most of your investment in GIS data and infrastructure.



Some spaces are still available in Wellington and Auckland.

Location: Auckland, Eagle Technology office
Date: Tuesday June 30, 2009

Location: Wellington, Eagle Technology office
Date: Thursday July 2, 2009

The same seminar will be held in the morning and repeated in the afternoon.
Please advise which session you would like to attend as places are limited.

AGENDA:

Morning session:
9:00-10:15: Design Strategies for Authoring and Publishing
10:15-10:30: break
10:30-12:00: Building Web Applications

Afternoon session:
1:00-2:15: Design Strategies for Authoring and Publishing
2:15-2:30: break
2:30-4:00: Building Web Applications

To register visit - www.eagle.co.nz/gis931

ColorBrewer 2.0 released

Well known ColorBrewer just got a facelift with release of ColorBrewer 2. Just in case you have not used the essence is compacted in a single line.

Color advice for cartography

Driven by this simple idea Cynthia Brewer created this very useful web application. The new version is Flash based but the functionality is the same as in old one.
What I like about ColorBrewer is that evey option, like “pick a color scheme:” has a learn more > link.

Under this link there are descriptions of icons or references to related books or web sites.


The process of selecting data classes, colours is easy and provides quick feedback using a sample map. In addition to this there is a  new option to downlad ColorTool for use in ArcGIS directly. If you are not ArcGIS user these colours can be exported to Excel file, Adobe Swatch Exchange or just set of color values (RGB, CMYK or HEX).

This a very useful site and I recommend it to anyone working in GIS or cartographic design.

Layer package patch for ArcGIS 9.3.1

New patch was released yesterday to addresses issues with downloading secure content from ArcGIS Online when using ArcGIS Desktop. If you are not using ArcGIS Online this is not a critical patch but ESRI is recommending download at earliest convenience.

File to download is gis931-DLL-patch.msp and it is only 1 MB.

HRD = Hard Rectangular Drive

While majority of large storage manufacturers are focusing on more or less traditional methods (SSD) DataSlide is taking different approach. DataSlide is developing Hard Rectangular Drive (HRD). What is that?

This image shows basics of HRD.

What are advantages of this technology? From DataSlide:

capitalizes on standard base process technologies
to create a dramatically new way to store and retrieve data with magnetic media:
1. Leverage LCD process
2. Use standard HDD sputtering/plating MEMS process
3. Use HDD perpendicular media DSSC/Oerlikon-Balzers coatings

In addition to this it also features:

1. A piezoelectric actuator keeps the rectangular media in precise motion 

2. A diamond solid lubricant coating protects the surfaces for years of worry free service

3. A massively parallel 2D array of magnetic heads reads from or writes to up to 64 embedded heads at a time 

According to DataSlide it will produce 500MB/sec with less than 4W for magnetic storage device.
Technology wise, there is one head per secor with symmetric read/write. According to specification HRD is reliable as HDD (or better), can have capacity from 80 GB to 2 TB, 160,000 rd/wt compared to 35,00rd / 3,000wt for SSD.

DataSlilde has partnered with Oracle to embed Berkeley Database into storage drive. Full article is available here.

DataSlide’s Hard DB fits Oracle’s Embedded Global Business Units OEM Charter by incorporating BerkeleyDB into the actual storage device itself (essentially a low energy, cool running, high performance. shock resistant hard drive) to make a ‘smart’ storage device. The potential applications are many and varied. Examples are TCP/IP based systems and video applications requiring multiple concurrent streams, media indexing, fast positioning. forward. back. skip. scene/track will have significant perfoniiance improvements with this winning architecture.

Western Digital Solid State Disks

Western Digital has announced their latest product line of solid state disks, SiliconDrive III

Three different drives are offered, 2.5” and 1.8”. Details are listed in table below.

Feature	SiliconDrive III 2.5-inch SATA Drive	SiliconDrive III 1.8-inch Micro SATA Drive	SiliconDrive III 2.5-inch PATA Drive
Interface	SATA 3 Gb/s	SATA 3 Gb/s	PATA ATA-7
Max R/W speed	100/80 MB/s	100/80 MB/s	85/60 MB/s
PowerArmor	30GB to 120GB	30GB to 60GB	30GB to 120GB
SiSMART	Standard	Standard	Standard
SolidStor	Standard	Standard	Standard

PowerArmor feature drive corruption from an ungraceful power-down, brownout, power spike or unstable voltage level.

SiSMART is ability to read and display the remaining amount of a drive’s useable life.

SolidStor technology makes designers, supply chain managers and OEMs confident that their storage system choice exceeds the high performance, high reliability and low total cost of ownership.

At the moment there are no prices announced for these drives and it would be nice to see them in a benchmark.

AMD demos DirectX 11 GPU

Earlier this month At a press conference in Taipei at Computex 2009 AMD has demonstrated its DirectX 11 GPU. Main features of DX 11 are:

• Down-level hardware and operating system support
• Improved multithreaded device
• New hardware stages for tessellation
• Improved texture compression
• Shader Model 5.0
• Compute shader

According to the article DirectX was influenced and developed on ATI graphics and they are proud to bring world’s first DX 11 GPU.

AMD has a long track record of delivering pioneering features that have gone on to become mainstays in the DirectX experience, and we’re doing it again with two mature, AMD-developed technologies in DirectX 11 – tessellation and the compute shader – both of which enable a better DirectX 11 experience for consumers.

Here is an example of tessellation that enables modelling with great detail.

To see it in motion check this video.

When they talk about influencing development of DirectX here is the video to support it.

Most interesting part of the video at the end of video showing DX 11 features (but it is very brief) at about 2’03” into the video.
There is another, much longer video showing use of compute shader for various aspects of scene management, AI etc.

All we have to do now is wait until DX11 and these graphics cards to become mainstream. Then we can see some really nice graphics running at full 60 FPS constantly.

3D hypsographic shaded print

It is interesting how things coincide…

In end of May I was in Wellington teaching “Cartography with ArcGIS” course and thought “I should write a post about that 3D print I did...” And several days later there is a post about 3D prints on Free Geography Tools blog.

Back to the 3D print I did. The print was done quite a while ago, for a NZ ESRI User Group Conferecne  in October-November of 2006. About one month before the Conference I got an e-mail with brochure about 3D printers from Contex. One of the vendors at the conference has these printers but they don’t offer print services. Eagle Technology is the main sponsor of the conference so was in contact with vendors. Luckily, there is another company in Auckland that has 3D printer and it is interested in collaboration. That company is 3D Print. When we met they showed me promotional GIS/mapping model they have. It was a standard size (30x30cm) tile with a city in flat area with satellite image draped on top. It wasn’t impressive since tallest feature on print was about 2cm tall. I have suggested that we put something together – I can provide data/model and they would print it. So we started working on this project.

I have access to topographic data for whole New Zealand including the 20m contours lines.  The question was what area to choose. One of immediate candidates was Wellington area for several reasons: conference is held in Wellington and terrain has interesting features. It didn’t take me long to create a DEM and hillshade from available data. Then I started experimenting with the colours. I have experimented a bit with elevation colour ramps (like described in this post). Here are some test combinations applied on top of Swiss hillshading. There are subtle differences visible in highest mountain region in southeast.




Here is one of the first tries I liked the best.

This is looking promising and I though it would be nice if I could get bathymetry data for Cook Straight. Luckily, National institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) was very interested and I got the shapefile data for Cook Straight. And it was really exciting to work with the data and see the results. Cook Straight has very interesting features as you can see. From supplied data I created the DEM as displayed below.

Next step is to combine two datasets. The result is shown below.

Now it is back to the colour schemas. NIWA has a colour ramp they are using but I didn’t like it that much.

And here is why. On its own I wouldn’t mind using it but it in my opinion it does not work well with elevation tint.
 
Here are some test screenshots.


After some testing I have decided to go with blue colour ramps and here are most likely candidates.



With colours almost sorted there was a next challenge – what data format will work the best for 3D print? According to printer’s manual it will work with VRML, 3DS and DXF/DWG data. I had a bit of problems with exporting data as VRML (I was using ArcGIS 9.2 pre-release then). Once exported VRML didn’t really give us the result we were expecting. There was lot of trouble reading the file and getting the texture (picture correctly positioned on top of model). In next try, I made a 3DS file and send it to 3D Print. Few days later I have also sent a DXF file and the image file of the final colour separately so they could experiment and choose the best option.

Eventually, the figured out the best data format and the way to print this (I am not too sure what format was used in the end) and they made first test 3D print from supplied data and this was the result.


Looking at this we have agreed that this is nowhere near to what we have expected. To make it better 3D Print made it bigger, to cover 4 tiles and to have a base and side walls. Each tile is 30x30cm and height depends on the features of terrain. The result was much better. The model was in our Auckland office and then taken to Wellington by one of our staff members about two weeks before the conference. Unfortunately, two of four tiles got broken in transport because the box with print was checked in at the airport. And that was under two week before the Conference!

Then the good guys at 3D Print decided to do more tweaking and make another run/copy of the model. The main reason for tweaking were the colours. All colours came out lighter then everybody has expected or liked. To my surprise, new model looked so much better than the first one.

Here are the photos of the second model taken with my Sony DSC P7 camera (old and not very good).


As you can see even new printed tiles broke but this is not visible when put together.
For the print we have included logos of all parties involved. Can you spot the spike under letter A in EAGLE?

There are some nice features of the terrain visible even if I use just two tiles.

Here are some close up shots to illustrate terrain and undersea features.



On the photo above you can see ‘terraces’ result of undersea configuration – large areas with very small slope. The same effect is noted on Free Geography Tools blog.

For this print we decided not to use solid base in order to save time and material for printing. Here is an underside of one tile.


Lessons learned
This was an interesting experience for several reasons. Firstly, working with new printing technology. Using 3D prints can really bring out the characteristics of the terrain (in this case). These are especially attractive for students and for people who can’t easily create mental picture of an area looking at the topographic map. 3D print as a company was very keen to work with us and demonstrate use of this technology in GIS and mapping.

Choosing symbology was quite difficult considering I had to combine bathymetry and terrain in single product. This would not be that difficult if it was a medium with known characteristics, like paper. In the first try colours used looked fine on screen and test print on paper but when used in 3D print they came out pale. To highlight the coastline I used orange colour that was too strong any line symbol was too wide. Lakes and swamp outlines were also too strong and too wide.

Printing in 3D is not cheap. One tile 30x30cm costs around $300 NZ. All together this printing costs were around $3,000 NZ. Once printed you should take care of the prints since there are quite fragile.
If I get the opportunity to do this again I would be delighted and hopefully the process would be less troublesome.

SATA 3.0 specification released

SATA-IO has released specification for SATA 3.0 standard on May 27th. Specification states transfer speed of up to 6 Gb/s and enhancements to support multimedia applications. Some of these enhancements are:

• A new Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command to enable isochronous data transfers for bandwidth-hungry audio and video applications
• An NCQ Management feature that helps optimize performance by enabling host processing and management of outstanding NCQ commands
• Improved power management capabilities
• A small Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector for more compact 1.8-inch storage devices
• A connector designed to accommodate 7mm optical disk drives for thinner and lighter notebooks
• Alignment with the INCITS ATA8-ACS standard

As you would expect it is backward compatible with earlier implementations. Full presentation containing more information can be viewed here.
It should not be too long before we start seeing SATA 3.0 drives around since about 98% of all desktop hard disks today are SATA drives.

Carbon nanotube data storage

One of the major problems with today’s ways of storing data is lifetime of the media. I am guessing that you are making copies of your 4-5 old CDs so you could view or edit your old family photos. I’ve done that few times and will do it few more times before we get something more permanent. Digital archiving methods seems to be of relatively short lifespan – from 5 years ford CDs to 20 for computer disks. 
Possible solution is in use of carbon nanotubes. This method is described in an article in Nano Letters site. The technique is briefly described here

…technique of placing a single iron crystal only a few billionths of a meter wide inside a hollow carbon nanotube. Like diamonds, nanotubes are among the most stable structures in existence. Once inserted into the tubes, the iron nanocrystals act as data bits, physically sliding from one end of the tube to the other in response to an electric current and in the process registering either a "1" or a "0" in the binary language of computers.

It is still long way to go before this becomes a prototype but potential is there. For potential capacity here is what the abstract says:

The shuttle memory has application for archival storage, with information density as high as 10¹² bits/in², and thermodynamic stability in excess of one billion years.

All we have to do is wait until someone actually start making these devices.

Sharp LCD screen uses 5 primary colours

According to recent news here and here (I was unable to locate the source for this) Sharp made a full HD LCD display that is using 5 instead of usual 3 primary colours. In this model additional colours are cyan and yellow. According to Sharp this device displays images "identical in appearance to real-world objects."
Display resolution is 1920x1080 with 60.5” screen size and will be demonstrated in San Antonio, Texas at Society for Information Display Symposium.
The main advantage of this display is ability to display almost entire Pointer colour space. Once these displays become common on the market this will make visualization lot better and easier assuming that software manufactures start making drivers for this type of display. According to articles brass, skin tones, petals are really hard ones to reproduce and this screen just may be the solution.
We may see more news about this product after Sunday so stay tuned.

VPlay or having fun with video using Surface

Microsoft has a invested a lot in Surface development and it now we see more and more uses of it. It is now in every episode of CSI Miami, news and other places.
Cambridge research branch is working on a project VPlay. This project is about videos and interaction between users and videos in real time.

VPlay allows users to manipulate video in real time. Digital objects representing video clips, effects and mixers are displayed on the surface and can be easily arranged to create an ever changing video output.

This video show how this works quite nicely but the background audio noise is quite strong.

Here is shorter video illustrating input and output windows connected with a series of effect/modifiers.

This would be a nice application for a multitouch laptop with
Windows 7 maybe…