Timeline control request

CesiumJS
1

-Can drag the blue pointer within the timeline(move to the edge will shift time range while keeping the pointer on that edge.)

-Can click the timeline to place the blue pointer.

-Can change timeline size magnitude with mousewheel (i.e. seconds,minutes,hours,days,weeks…)

However what you can’t seem to do is just shift the timeline range without moving the time the pointer is pointing at.

Say you have the timeline set as follows:

-range set to 1 month from June01 to June30.

-pointer at June20

I want to keep the pointer at June20 while shifting the range from say June15 to July15. I was thinking this could be done when dragging the top half of the timeline.

2

I believe middle-click drag can already do what you want (which may be standard in movie editing software, but I’m not sure).

In the long run, the Timeline really needs to be rewritten and redesigned, it’s the oldest UI code in Cesium and it doesn’t even follow many of our coding practices (and it shows it through the API).

3

Thanks Matt, that’s exactly what I was looking for. I wonder if Timeline controls could be added to the Navigation button on the top right, I bet many people aren’t aware of mwheel spin and mwheel button(3rd button) controls.

Perhaps ctrl-left drag could do the same as middle click drag does in Timeline (both of those controls tilt the 3D view.)

When/if the timeline is improved perhaps a readout displaying timeline range could be added as well. Currently if I want to know the range I have to look at the far left and far right and manually subtract, which is time consuming (not to mention the eyes batting back and forth.)

I’d love to control the sim clock speed by spinning a 3DMouse. If I can detect when the bottom left widget has focus I could do just that. Have it snap back to 1x speed when you let go, or press a button when it’s at the speed you want to make it stay there after you let go of the 3DMouse.

4

There’s actually a GitHub issue for refactoring the Timeline. I added a link to this discussion so we revisit it when the time comes: https://github.com/AnalyticalGraphicsInc/cesium/issues/754

5

I’ve definitely had users not very comfortable, and even experienced cesium users not realize that you can mouse wheel in and out of the timeline.

When the refactor happens, it’d also be good to see the option of having a beginning time and end time indicators on the timeline, a-la google earth. A lot of GE data presumes that you can easily move between feature times or cover a range of time to see the temporal data available. This can be hard to do using the cesium timeline.

6

It seems that the GE timeline is limiting: It won’t let you zoom in and out, nor will it let you shift the timeline left and right, nor does it have tick marks.

It would be nice to have the 2 end points and range magnitude displayed. Also I think it would be better if the tick mark labeling displayed offsets from the beginning end point, rather than cram in the entire date/time on a major tick mark. This way you can label more tick marks because the string size is smaller.

As is already the case, the tick marks could fall on ‘number floors’. For example say the beginning end point was say 5.13 seconds and ending end point was say 13.13 seconds. Instead of tick marks falling on 6.13 7.13 etc they’d fall on 6.00 7.00 etc.

I noticed the major tick marks are always 24 minor ticks apart, which makes sense for marking hours of days. However 12 would make sense for marking months of a year, 10 would make sense for marking years of a decade, etc.

-Although the number of days in a month can vary from 30-31 (28-29 for Feb) 365.25/12 = 30.4375 days should make a good enough approximation, so each month tick mark would represent 30.4375 days.

-Although the number of weeks in a month can vary 30.4375/4 = 7.609375 days should make a good enough approximation, so each week tick mark would represent 7.609375 days.

The slight approximation errors would only occur when you’re talking weeks/months. Once the range is either less than a week or greater than a year those approximations disappear due to exactness: exactly 60 seconds in a minute, exactly 60 minutes in an hour, exactly 24 hours in a day, exactly 10 years in a decade, exactly 10 decades in a century.

If one could redo the calendar system it would be better make the 12 months exactly 30 days and make the week 5 days long, and have a 5 day ‘remainder week’ at the end of the year that isn’t part of a month: 12*30=360, 360+5 = 365. On Leap years the ‘remainder week’ would be 6 days instead of 5. When a month starts so does the week, when a month ends so does the week, and every month has exactly 6 weeks. Get rid of Tuesday and Thursday and have a 3 day work week!