Mark Brown's Web Platform Blog : Behind The Maps

Behind the Maps – Flying the UltraCam

mjbrown — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:41:20 GMT

Hey everyone. So I’ve published our second episode in our series, Behind the Maps - The Technology of Virtual Earth, on Virtual Earth out on Channel 9. In this episode, Flying the UltraCam we go to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, home of Keystone Aerial Surveys, one of the companies that flies the UltraCam that captures the imagery you see in Virtual Earth today.

Throughout we’ll interview a number of the people who work with this camera including Ken Potter, Executive Vice President and Neil DiFranco, Project Manager at Keystone. Neil, who himself is a Survey Pilot, will show us how they do flight planning with an aerial camera which is very different than what a regular pilot does and will demo the software they use to do it. Later Neil will take us on a flight and we’ll meet Ben Miller, one of their operators who will talk about how the UltraCam and the flight management software work together. He’ll show us all the steps during the flight and show us the UltraCam in action! After our flight we’ll meet David Day, Director of IT for Keystone, who will walk us through what happens to the imagery when it gets back on the ground and how they process it before it is sent to Boulder for the next step in its journey and the subject of our next episode.

This was a really fun video to make. Generally I like to keep these videos as simple as possible and if I can do the entire thing in one take. This one was different. There is a TON of content we cover and I probably should have made this into three separate videos. But seeing as this is the internet age and everyone wants everything right now I decided to make it into one long video. It runs nearly an hour but I promise there is a ton of great information on the UltraCam and we go into deep detail on each step in how it is used to capture the high resolution aerial imagery. What you also may not realize is there is a bunch of technology that goes into the flight planning, the operation of the camera and the flight software in the air and the post-processing of the imagery. I think you’ll find this episode fascinating and I do hope you all enjoy it.

Behind The Maps - Flying the UltraCam

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,UltraCam,Channel 9

BAH, What a Wasted Day

mjbrown — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:23:09 GMT

Today’s been a tough one for me. To begin I was having issues with my normal laptop, a severely underpowered Sony VAIO that I’ve had for about three years. It’s never liked Vista and to be sure Vista has hated it right back. Still it is small, weighing less that four pounds and most often runs Office and a browser just fine. Good enough for non-dev work. Today that machine started acting up because the SMS client form our corporate machines wanted to install a Vista update that was already on the machine. Problem there is the install wasn’t smart enough to recognize that. Normally that isn’t a problem but this update was mandatory and the SMS Client is smart enough to shut your port down if it thinks you haven't installed it so I had to call our support guys to sort it out. Total time spent with IT guy on the phone? 1.5 hours. Total productivity during that time? 0.0 hours.

After that I needed to get an audio plug in for my copy of Sony Vegas Studio Platinum, the Noise Reduction one. Making videos I realized quickly that this is a MUST HAVE because everywhere I record there is background noise and it annoys the hell out of me. To be sure I ordered the right thing I called Sony and they said,

<typical stoner dude voice> “uh, actually you need to upgrade to Vegas Pro from, uh, Platinum. uh, yeah, that thing won’t work. Vegas Pro has what you need bra”</typical stoner dude voice>.

"mkay" I said, "I’ll go online and buy that one".

Next I go online and try to purchase it but for some reason their website isn’t processing orders so I call back and order it from another person, this time thankfully, no stoner voice. They process the order and email me the download URL and keys. I install it and of course there is no Noise Reduction plug-in to be found. I call back and they say, again no stoner voice, “Yeah, I'm not sure why someone would tell you that. What was his name?" "I don't remember" I said, "but I'll bet he's in the parking lot right now breaking the law". "Um, yes sir. Actually what you need to do is purchase Sound Forge which has the plug-ins and then you can use them directly from Vegas Platinum” "Great!" I say. "Cancel my order. I’ll order Sound Forge instead". Total time talking to Jeff Spicoli and friends, 2.5 hours. Total productivity during that time? 0.0 hours.

Finally, I’ve been trying for three days to get a very fresh build of SQL Server Spatial installed on my demo laptop. I'm giving a presentation with Ed Katibah on Virtual Earth and SQL Spatial at the GeoWeb conference next week in Vancouver, BC. Anyhoo, this laptop, unlike my Sony VAIO is a 13 pound, 64-bit brick house of a machine. I got the pre-reqs installed and then reboot, start Setup again and ZIP, I got nothing. With the help of some product team guys we figured out that my machine was a piece of toast. Unfortunately that’s what happens with demo machines, they sometimes get fried with all the pre-release stuff many of us run to do our jobs. So now as the crowning achievement of my lack of productivity today I'm flattening the entire thing and rebuilding it from scratch. Total time dorking with this machine for the last three days? Hmm, roughly 5.893 hours. Total productivity during that time? 0.0 hours.

I have to say that it's not all bad today however. My first video for Behind the Maps is doing really well with just over 38,000 viewings since I released it a week ago Saturday. I am currently working out the details for my next video where I go up and fly with this thing. There is apparently some cool technology that coordinates the plane and the camera and some interesting operational details too about how we gather images that applies to the incredible 3D work you see in Virtual Earth today. Stay tuned.

New Video Series, Behind the Maps – The Technology of Virtual Earth

mjbrown — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:06:14 GMT

Hey everyone so I’ve finally published the first episode of Behind the Maps out on Channel 9. This video series will take you on a journey where we will follow the path the data and imagery in Virtual Earth takes from the manufacture of the camera, to the capturing of imagery in an airplane, to the processing of that imagery, to the Virtual Earth platform and 3D control that delivers all of this data and imagery straight to your browser.

Our first episode takes us to Graz, Austria home of the UltraCam, our high-resolution aerial image camera. We meet Dr. Michael Gruber, inventor of the UltraCam and Bernhard Reitinger the creator of the UltraMap software that is used with the UltraCam camera.

Michael goes into some details about just how they built a camera that has such a high mega-pixel rate using a technique to combine 9 individual CCD’s to act like one big one and use 4 other CCD’s to handle all the color spectrum channels. Bernhard also goes into details on the UltraMap software and how it is used to manage and correct the imagery that is captured by this incredible camera. Here’s a link to the video below. I also have a nice picture of this camera here below I took at their camera laboratory in Graz. --Enjoy.

Behind The Maps - UltraCam

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,UltraCam,Channel 9