ArcGIS Explorer 900 released
August 13, 2009 17 Comments
It looks like ESRI is releasing ArcGIS Explorer 900, just in time for WhereCamp5280. Some new features include:
- New UI (the Office ribbon)
- New basemap galley for easy access to different base maps
- 2D/3D <- What I think really sets AGX apart from other globes. It is a 2D world out there!
- Better KML support and support for layer packages (becomes a viewer for proprietary ESRI data0
- New presentation mode (if you saw Bern demo this at the UC, you know how valuable that will be)
- Bing Maps free to ArcGIS Desktop users (if you have ArcGIS Desktop license with Bing, you can use that on AGX)
- Localization
- Projections! Who says you have to work in mercator
- .NET SDK
AGX has come a very long way so if you haven’t tried it in a while you’ll want to give it another shot. One thing I did note, it doesn’t run on Windows 7 very well. Might be me, but I’ll see Bern tomorrow and ask him about it (though I can guess his answer, “We’ll support it when Windows 7 ships”)
About James Fee
Our organization has a large collection (16 sq km) of detailed photo textured models in both KML and ESRI Multipatch. We have been using AGX 900 beta for a bit now. Kudos to ESRI. This product has come a long way as you say. We are considering pushing out AGX 900 to our organization as the primary 3D viewer. Big benefit of AGX 900 over Google Earth is the ability to bring in your enterprise vector and over lay it with 3D data and hosted raster data. Additionally the navigation experience is actually quite easy to use.
James – we already talked about this here at WhereCamp5280 – check for a graphics card driver update, that should do the trick. We will soon have an online tool that will help you evaluate and check for things like this, should be up in a week or so and I’ll blog it when it goes live.
but explorer throws Vista into Aero Basic…..shouldn’t that be the app getting fixed and not a video driver?
You can disable the disabling of Aero effects by adding the following attribute to the E3Settings element of your settings file:
<E3Settings DisableAeroDWM="false"
two thoughts:
One – Yes, James, it most decidedly IS a 2d world out there. I’ll wager 99.8% of all the GIS in the world is done in 2d. And the rest is…see below.
Two – 16sq.km (6sq.mi.) is roughly downtown Atlanta. That’s really not a lot. If you think about it, most major metro areas are roughly 1,000sq.km (386sq.mi.) from one side of the conurbation to the other.
If you’re going to work in 3D, why not render the whole thing? Because for the most part ESRI ‘tools’ for 3d are really more like ‘toys’ is why.
If you are REALLY doing 3d work, you need to get into some big iron to run the visualization. And that’s well out of reach (or reason, for that matter) for GIS programs. There are exponentially huge processor requirements to handle the rendering 3d models, and ESRI doesn’t look at 3d as a core issue. Nor should they, for that matter.
At the end of the day, as James alluded to up front in his comment about a 2d world, the idea of 3d is technically alluring, but rationally irrelevant for all but a small portion of the GIS community. One might aver that 3d portion could/should/does their 3d analytics in tools other than ESRI (and certainly other than the Explorer visualization marble).
3d is kewl, but kewl doesn’t pay the bills…it creates them.
In your opinion, which 3D analytics should be done in tools other than ESRI’s?
3D Block modelling (i.e. raster math, but in 3D), engineering design. Those are the two big ones.
One thing..Atlanta’s downtown isn’t layed out like a typical city, especially those up north. Just going from memory. Atlanta’s downtown isn’t as dense as a typical city either (building wise that is).
Most folks working in 3D use CAD programs for dimensional representation…AutoCAD, Bentley, Intergraph, Solidworks, Dassault, etc.
The trouble with a TIN-based model is the relative intolerance for bad geometries hidden within the facets, and the load that large models place on the CPU. Once you start going big and wide in your models, you start needing some real horsepower. It’s a tough issue to address without either changing the data forms (not likely to happen with ESRI) or adding hardware (not all that practical for most folks).
So people do 3d in small pieces…because their CAD program may not handle larger models in memory (not quite the issue as it used to be) or because their TIN-based datasets go kablooie inside the ESRI platforms.
Viewsheds, hydrology, etc., are all done in ESRI or using ESRI ‘extensions’ and add-ons. But at scales and extents that are more local than regional. This is a data- and processor-limited issue.
Highly detailed ‘visualizations’ [perhaps a better choice of words than my earlier reference] are also particularly problematic. It’s tough to ingest thousands of building models, meter-accurate terrain, or non-generalized dendritic networks. Gaming boxes look very interesting for this, but that requires wholesale data conversion, which turns into a non-starter when you’re bringing over line work with topology, etc., etc.
Thorny problem to solve.
“Viewsheds, hydrology, etc., are all done in ESRI or using ESRI ‘extensions’”
The reasons for responding to this comment are Manifold …
I just downloaded and installed the new version. But am I missing something for data access? I cannot figure out if the new version allows for pulling data from a personal GDB or a personal sde database on sql express 2005. Seems to me you can only access a file GDB and a true ArcSDE GDB.
@Robert: I believe you have to create a Layer Package out of that data and then view it in AGX.
http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?id=220&pid=212&topicname=Saving_a_layer_to_disk
First impression- nice interface. Much better performance and I like adding all variety of data without the annoying caching wizard of previous versions.
My gripe… the .nmc file format for notes.
1. Wish you could read those files in ArcGIS- I’m thinking markups from engineers/non-GIS folks coming to your desk instead of paper napkins.
2. Why not kml for those?
Hey at least they support Vista x64 now!
I installed and got it to work after I updated video card drivers. Wouldn’t even load .shp files before that. I too wish I could export to kml for use with developing google maps. Hmm…maybe a way to embed your AGX 2D product on a web page, now there’s a concept! Or at least allow export to kml for use with the competition. I like the new AGX, could take it to the next level though.
Do you think ESRI is working on a web browser API for AGX similar to what Google has done with its Google Earth plug-in?
I would LOVE to be able to use this in a mash-up with ESRI’s Javascript API for ArcGIS Server.
I would also like to have a way to publish ArcScene documents to the web….
Unfortunately, custom OpenGL drawing has been deprecated.
http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=184&f=2208&t=288791&mc=4.
Maybe if enough people ask, they’ll support it again in a future release.