Google Summer of Code

All,

Great news - Google Summer of Code is on for this year. We can submit our proposal March 18-29, and will know if we are selected by April 8. Coding will take place June to September ending with a Mentor Summit at Google in October.

I’ve started creating project ideas on the wiki:

https://github.com/AnalyticalGraphicsInc/cesium/wiki/Google-Summer-of-Code-Ideas

Please update it or propose ideas here. If you are interested in mentoring, add your name and email to it. Although I don’t have them yet, I want to put a representative image with each project and screenshots of Cesium across the top.

Idea lists for the projects from last year are here:

http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2011/Ideas

I’ll act as the overall administrator as they call it, and Scott has kindly agreed to be the required backup administrator.

Thanks,

Patrick

There’s a couple of things I forgot to mention:

For project ideas, I think a few good areas that I didn’t list yet are:

  • Showcase apps combining Cesium with other HTML5 APIs and/or open data
  • General Widgets
  • Widgets for Dojo/jQuery/OWF
  • Build infrastructure, e.g., optimizing doc generation
    If you have ideas, please post them here or on the wiki.

Also, for mentors, Google estimates that it requires 5 hours per week. In my experience with interns, it can require up to 10 hours per week depending on the project and the student. I’m willing to mentor up to two projects. It’s up to you how many you will are interesting in.

Finally, Google also requires backup mentors for when mentors go on vacation, etc. so I added that to the wiki. Please signup.

Patrick

I’ve made significant updates to our projects page for Google Summer of Code:

Google Summer of Code Ideas · CesiumGS/cesium Wiki · GitHub

The due date is March 18.

More projects idea are welcome. Projects should have minimal ramp-up, be relativity standalone, and be scoped for a student to be successful in a summer.

I’d like to finalize mentors and backup mentors for the current projects. Mentors will work closely with the students to help see the project through. Backup mentors are required for when mentors are on vacation, etc. In some cases, having both mentors fully involved will be useful. I took a stab at guessing who would be interested in what, but please edit the wiki page as you see fit.

Android Performance

Mentor: Kevin?

Backup Mentor: Cozzi?

Compass

Mentor: Ed?

Backup Mentor: Dan?

Declutter for Map Labels

Mentor: Patrick Cozzi

Backup Mentor: Dan?

Geometric Algorithms

Mentor: Dan?

Backup Mentor: Cozzi?

Vector Data Visualization with JSON

Mentor: Amato?

Backup Mentor: Ford?

Raster Data Visualization with Web Map Tile Service

Mentor: Fili?

Backup Mentor: Kevin?

Vector Data Visualization with Geography Markup Language

Mentor: TBA

Backup Mentor: TBA

Vector Data Visualization with Web Feature Service

Mentor: TBA

Backup Mentor: TBA

Navigation Widget

Mentor: Ed?

Backup Mentor: Amato?

Credits Layout

Mentor: Scott?

Backup Mentor: Ed?

Offline Web App Support

Mentor: Scott?

Backup Mentor: Kevin?

Thanks,

Patrick

Awesome write-up. Thanks for putting it together. I’d be happy to mentor or be back-up for the 1 or 2 projects that I’m qualified for. Here are some other thoughts.

For Geometric Algorithms, can we add hexahedrons, cylinders and airspaces (polygons from the earth with min/max height)? Maybe that’s too may things but they are all important.

Why wouldn’t the compass just be built into the Navigation Widget?(it is in Google Earth) Seems redundant to have both.

Here are some potential ideas off the top of my head, I’m not qualified to mentor but I thought I’d mention them.

Improved ocean graphics - Specifically, blending of boundary tiles to remove the currently jaggedness of the shore line. Perhaps a different shader to simulate tides and waves closer to the shoreline.

Tree generation - Use the world tree cover data available from NOAA (http://glcf.umd.edu/data/treecover/description.shtml) to generate procedural trees. Also allow for groups of trees to be “painted” by defining an area of the globe. There are existing open-source JavaScript fractal tree generators that we would just have to do the WebGL part for. (generation could happen in worker threads)

Volumetric Clouds - I’m sure it’s more complicated than I realize, but having good looking clouds would be awesome.

Day/Night cycle - I’m not sure if this is a lot of work or not, but it would be nice if viewing the atmosphere from ground level brought back the day night cycle (so you would see stars at night). This would not be noticeable from the global level, only below a certain altitude.

That’s my two cents. If you think any of my new ideas could be included in the list, I’d be happy to do a more complete write-up in line with the format you laid out.

Thanks for the enthusiasm. Some good ideas here. A few comments below.

For Geometric Algorithms, can we add hexahedrons, cylinders and airspaces (polygons from the earth with min/max height)?

For an airspace, is that just a wall with it’s bottom not on the ellipsoid? This reminds me that I also want to add ribbon lines - think the track on Rainbow Road, but with our own materials for shading.

As for cylinders, we’re actually going to do them with ray casting (should be a trivial change to the ellipsoid) so that’s separate.

Why wouldn’t the compass just be built into the Navigation Widget?(it is in Google Earth) Seems redundant to have both.

Maybe. I could see some apps wanting the compass without the nav widget. Perhaps that means it’s just an option on the nav widget. We could leave them separate, then sort it out as we get proposals (like the GML and WFS projects) or decide now. Either way, I’ll update the project page accordingly.

Your other ideas are good (add the tree one to the roadmap if it isn’t already). If someone is able to mentor these, we should do writeups for them. I can serve as backup for most of them, but won’t be able to be the main contact.

Patrick

Yes, I would define an airspace as a polygon at altitude with walls and a bottom and a top. Trees aren’t on the roadmap, so I’ll add it.

Thanks everyone for signing up to mentor. The project page is updated:

(Feel free to change your contact info to your preferred email).

We still have a week to brainstorm project ideas. There are two projects still without mentors:

If you are interested and have enough bandwidth to mentor either or both of these, please do so.

Patrick

We’re submitting our Google Summer of Code application on Monday so here’s one last chance to update our project page:

https://github.com/AnalyticalGraphicsInc/cesium/wiki/Google-Summer-of-Code-Ideas

If you are interested, there are two projects still without mentors:

We’ll know if we are accepted on April 8.

Patrick

Am interested in using the Vector Data Visualization with WFS or GMS. Did these projects ever materialize?

Ellen

No, but we did add support for GeoJSON and TopoJSON, and are working on native KML in the kml branch.

Patrick

Thanks for the update.