Technical Evangelist, Brian Pene, submitted the following article:
Microsoft Virtual Earth sounds awesome. I was experimenting this weekend using Project Freewheel and Google Earth to georeference a DWF drawing/map and overlay into Google Earth. I wanted to make this work in the Microsoft Virtual Earth beta. (See James Fee GIS Blog for more Microsoft Virtual Earth information.) I was curious if Microsoft had a nicer solution for interoperability with other data than Google’s KML.
If you want a preview, you can open the KML file in Google Earth. You will see the DWF file rendered on the fly (using freewheel.labs.autodesk.com) as an overlay image in Google Earth. The overlay is set to refresh every 2 hours, so if a new DWF was published it could update live in Google Earth. If you are a Google Earth user:
I didn’t throw much time at this, so if you zoom way in on the DWF overlay, it gets a bit pixelated. With a little work, it could be improved to update to high res as you zoom in. It’s not 3D, but I think it is awesome. I can take any DWF out there, georef it, and overlay/visualize in a virtual earth setting. 3D support in Project Freewheel is coming, so it won't be long now.
Brian's original DWF file: H1.dwf
Project Freewheel can render the DWF into a PNG as in:
You can position the Freewheel PNG as a semi-transparent image in Google Earth as:
This is a true testament to the flexibility that Project Freewheel allows for DWF files. Brian is working with Microsoft Virtual Earth now. Look for a follow-up article soon.
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