Feedback please - Render Terrain Widget

[Anonymous User]

Hi, I've created a widget to create a simulated terrain model of our LiDAR data.  Please, try it and let me know if the user interface - tilt, rotation and freeze is user friendly,  thanks!

gis.macombgov.org/flexviewer2

The widget is under "I want to..."  Render Terrain.

[Noah-Sager]

Hi Dan,


I checked out the widget, very cool. Here's my feedback:

1) Pretty easy to figure out. It took me a minute to understand how the ball worked, but once I did I enjoyed playing around with it.

2) Rotate and Exaggerate height worked pretty well, but I found myself having to constantly reset the settings after I stopped rendering and moved onto a new area. Perhaps there could be a way to reset those settings to default? Like true north and middle (or low) height perhaps.

3) Sometimes the map "twitches" and moves very, very slowly after double-clicking to freeze, and this can become a bit unsettling.

4) The close button was missing (usually the little "x" in the top right).

Overall, this is a great widget and a very cool use of the Flex Viewer. Thanks for sharing!

Viewed in Chrome.

[Anonymous User]

nsager;304124 wrote:
Hi Dan,

I checked out the widget, very cool. Here's my feedback:


...

QUOTE]

Great feedback Noah, as for #2, if you click the "N"(north) - rotation resets. Every "Build Rendering" will reset the height exaggeration silder to the default exaggeration for that scale. But, I will try a "reset to default" button.

I attempted having listeners for every change in the map - to rebuild the rendering on every extent or TOC change. But, I didn't like having so many listeners running. So, I thought the user should be in control and have "Build Rendering" and "Hide Rendering". But, maybe I will re-evaluate that, too.

as for #3, the dimensional math is pretty intensive and the computations can greatly task the users CPU. Some devices have no problem at all. Actually, three dimensional modeling on a web browser is not very common. I can make it run "smoother" - but the cost would be the quality. Maybe, I should give users a choice of "low resolution" or "high resolution".

as for #4, the missing "x" - this was a release-build compile issue and should be fixed.

Thanks for saying the widget is good. I'm not sure of the usefullness of the widget. But, like you said, I think it can give users another point of view to evaluate a map location(another perspective). And, make our GIS maps a little more entertaining to use.