Cesium in 2013 - Outreach

CesiumJS
1

All,

In 2012, we did some outreach including the Santa tracker and various talks. As Cesium grows and more apps are written this year, we will have great opportunities for developer outreach to grow our user and contributor community.

In addition to what we’ve already been doing, here’s a few things on my mind:

  • Web
  • Cesium itself is very cool, but it’s killer apps that drive adoption. We need to highlight folks developing these apps, and build a gallery showcasing them (like the Santa tracker) as previously mentioned.
  • Chrome Web Store - Post the next-generation Cesium Viewer (or really, just an incremental polished version) on the web store as a free app as another way for users to discover us.
  • Chrome Experiments - A popular experiment can generate significant buzz.
  • MDN Demo Studio - Similar to Chrome Experiments.
  • Continue our blog with useful content, not marketing fluff.
  • Create a Wikipedia page for Cesium.
  • Conferences
  • FOSS4G NA (May. MN) and/or FOSS4G (September. UK). I’d like to see presentations on general Cesium, CZML, our work with OpenLayers, and, of course, user success stories.
  • SIGGRAPH (August. CA) - Several things in the works. TBA.
  • GEOINT (October. FL), ITSEC (December. FL), and OSSI events. Ideas welcome.
  • There are many other conferences like Where, OSCON, and Web3D. I’m curious to hear where folks think Cesium will have the most impact.
  • Publications
  • Some types of publications are more useful than others for outreach, but (1) they are great for credibility and (2) they are fun. I’m really only in touch with the graphics literature, here’s a few I like:
  • The Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques.
  • The call for authors for GPU Pro 5 is open until March.
  • It is not out of the question for Christophe and I to start another volume of OpenGL Insights, but nothing is planned.
  • In addition, articles on HTML5Rocks and Mozilla Hacks (like NORAD Tracks Santa) would be cool.

Thoughts and other ideas?

Regards,

Patrick

2

Hi Patrick,

I like where you all are going with the direction/approach for 2013. Very exciting stuff.

As you mentioned, the Chrome Experiments (and Mozilla Demos site) provide some jaw-dropping examples of what creative people can do with WebGL and a little bit of data. I agree that having a showcase and/or potentially forming a small group to work on some R&D/experimental apps for public display would make a lot of sense.

Right now, the demonstrations/examples in Sandcastle fit nicely into the AGI and wider-community niche, but may not resonate with the general developer audience who are figuring out ways to use three.js, d3.js, raphael.js and so forth to overlay other types of data onto a cool map. Most of us know that Cesium could be used to do a lot of the same things but it may not be apparent given the current examples. Therefore, increasing the awareness of Cesium in the context of the HTML 5 / WebGL / Social Media / Data Analytics may go a long way.

I agree with all of your thoughts on increasing the awareness of Cesium; what about featuring regular, short & sweet examples of using Cesium to do something new and/or different with associated code snippets on the Cesium blog? The broader Cesium community could also be invited to submit their own examples for inclusion. This would be a nice to have in addition to a dedicated Cesium showcase and aforementioned Chrome Experiments.

Oh, and lastly…the OpenLayers / Cesium integration will be huge! I see that they are very close to meeting their funding goals…do you know if development has already begun on this effort? There are a few other JS mapping libraries that are gaining attention (Polymaps) for example, maybe there could be some integration there as well?

Thanks for giving us an opportunity to provide input.

  • Chris
3

Chris,

Thanks for the kind words and input.

Right now, the demonstrations/examples in Sandcastle fit nicely into the AGI and wider-community niche, but may not resonate with the general developer audience who are figuring out ways to use three.js, d3.js, raphael.js and so forth to overlay other types of data onto a cool map. Most of us know that Cesium could be used to do a lot of the same things but it may not be apparent given the current examples. Therefore, increasing the awareness of Cesium in the context of the HTML 5 / WebGL / Social Media / Data Analytics may go a long way.

I absolutely agree. Space, defense, geospatial, etc. are vertical markets that Cesium serves, but Cesium should have broad appeal for any app that needs a globe. I agree we need more general examples - along with more seamless and complete KML support to facilitate them.

what about featuring regular, short & sweet examples of using Cesium to do something new and/or different with associated code snippets on the Cesium blog? The broader Cesium community could also be invited to submit their own examples for inclusion.

We just started tutorials on the blog, like the imagery layers one. We certainty welcome contributors here, but short code snippets as you suggest, would also be great. Perhaps we’ll start soliciting them once we reach critical mass with the tutorials.

Oh, and lastly…the OpenLayers / Cesium integration will be huge! I see that they are very close to meeting their funding goals…do you know if development has already begun on this effort? There are a few other JS mapping libraries that are gaining attention (Polymaps) for example, maybe there could be some integration there as well?

I don’t know if the OpenLayers 3 team has officially announced anything, but there is plenty of activity on their github and we are in touch with them regularly. As for Polymaps, Leaflet, etc., we certainty welcome everyone to integrate with Cesium. A few months ago, I noticed that someone forked both Leaflet and Cesium, but didn’t see any actual development. In the next several months, we are focusing on making OpenLayers 3 successful.

Slightly off topic: a while back you mentioned that you might be interested in showcasing your app on the Cesium website. If that’s still the case, drop me a note - pjcozzi@siggraph.org.

Thanks again for the input.

Regards,

Patrick

4

I’ve been pimping Cesium where I can. Right now I’m trying to get the OK to show-off our Cesium- and SGP-based satellite tracker as part of NASA’s presence at the SXSW Interactive conference in March. Hopefully this will allow us to reach a wider audience and demographic. (First we have to get our code to a stable [enough] state and integrated with our public-facing Science CMS).

I’m also hoping to convince my NASA Science Mission clients to use Cesium for visualizing NASA’s Earth science data – I think letting casual users explore temperature, weather, earthquakes, vegetation, etc etc would be great outreach and very popular with the education community. Just starting to explore with the client what data we’ve got and who we might put it to use… (NASA’s got WorldWind and EyesOnEarth but they both serve larger purposes and rely on very very large external app downloads – Unity game engine and Java respectively – so I see Cesium fitting a larger niche where you don’t necessarily need solar system scale details).

Thanks.

5

Very cool. Thanks Chris.

As you allude to, one of the main reasons we started Cesium was to have a platform that does not require separate apps or plugins. Thankfully, the timing of WebGL and all the HTML5 buzz was perfect.

Regards,

Patrick

6

In addition to the Chrome Store, I just learned about the Firefox Marketplace, which is also worth investigation.

Patrick

7

Oops, just catching up with the Cesium emails and I'm a bit late to
the party on this one. I'm working on OpenLayers 3.

OpenLayers 3 has indeed reached its funding goals, and here at
Camptocamp SA (Switzerland/France) we have 2.5 developers working full
time on OpenLayers 3. The project is advancing very quickly, and we're
totally stoked to be working with Matt, Dan, and Patrick at Cesium on
close integration between the two projects. Reading the Cesium code is
helping us get our vector support right, and both Camptocamp and AGI
share the common goal of high performance integration.

We have very complementary projects. Cesium is focused on providing a
high performance, high precision, powerful globe in WebGL, and
OpenLayers 3 is focused on high functionality, portable, high
performance 2D and simple 3D (limited area, non-globe) maps.
OpenLayers 3 will defer to the experts at AGI for the globe, and in
return, hopes that it can popularise Cesium amongst the geospatial
community.

The immediate short-term goal is synchronized cameras so that you see
linked globe and flat 2D views. The medium-term goal is data
synchronization so that you'll add your data once and see it both in
OpenLayers 3's runs-almost-everywhere 2D view and Cesium's rich
high-precision globe view.

Regards,
Tom

8

Well said Tom. Thanks for the summary and your enthusiasm.

Patrick

9

Good summarize answer.
but i am curious to get any idea about the release date of ol3 when it will support to cesium.

Thanks,
Manish

10

Hi Manish,

Here’s an early demo showing OL3 and Cesium with synced cameras - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ol3-dev

For a release date, you should ask the OL3 folks - http://ol3js.org/ol3/cesium/examples/cesium.html

Patrick

11

Thanks Patrick for the correct links.