Wednesday, April 20, 2011

OpenLayers: Free Maps for the Web

OpenLayers is a pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a (still-developing) JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth APIs, with one important difference -- OpenLayers is Free Software, developed for and by the Open Source software community.

Furthermore, OpenLayers implements industry-standard methods for geographic data access, such as the OpenGIS Consortium's Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) protocols. Under the hood, OpenLayers is written in object-oriented JavaScript, using components from Prototype.js and the Rico library. The OpenLayers code base already has hundreds of unit tests, via the Test.AnotherWay framework.
As a framework, OpenLayers is intended to separate map tools from map data so that all the tools can operate on all the data sources. This separation breaks the proprietary silos that earlier GIS revolutions have taught civilization to avoid. The mapping revolution on the public Web should benefit from the experience of history.
http://openlayers.org/

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Javascript 3D Engine

three.js

Javascript 3D Engine

The aim of the project is to create a lightweight 3D engine with a very low level of complexity — in other words, for dummies. The engine can render using <canvas>, <svg> and WebGL.

Examples

WebGL (Context 3D)

equirectangular scissors lookat video dof ribbon vertexcolors particles lines shader materials_normalmap2 materials_grass materials_normalmap geometry_terrain_gl geometry_minecraft materials_shader_fresnel materials_cars materials_cubemap_refraction materials_cubemap_balls_reflection materials_cubemap_balls_refraction materials_cubemap_escher materials_cubemap materials_gl materials_shaders large_mesh

Canvas (Context 2D)

materials_reflection materials materials_depth materials_normal lights_pointlights interactive_cubes camera_ortographic geometry_birds geometry_earth geometry_terrain materials_video geometry_panorama geometry_cube particles_sprites particles_random particles_wave particles_floor

Featured projects

Photoparticles Plumegraph HelloRacer FastKat Sculpt Voxels The Wilderness Downtown Or so they say... Failure Space Cannon 3D Alocasia DDD jsflowfield4d spikeball