FalconView Comes to FOSS4G

http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/falconview-moving-dod-open-source

FalconView Announces FalconView for Facebook

ATLANTA, GA - In an effort to bring a more social experience to the mission planning community, FalconView researchers have completed a year-long effort to integrate two of the most popular and useful tools in the DoD mission planner's kit: FalconView and Facebook.

"The idea is to make mission planning more people-oriented, more social, and more fun," said FalconView program manager Chris Bailey.  "This will take us beyond just icons on a map.  FalconView for Facebook will add the human dimension to the experience.  Intelligence analysts who have long desired better integration between geospatial intelligence and human intelligence have their wish."

One of the features of FalconView for Facebook is the ability to open a target's Facebook page from within the FalconView GUI.  Bailey demonstrated this feature to us in the lab by linking FalconView to a live intelligence feed, right-clicking on a combatant radar site, and opening the "Facebook places" page for the site, where he pointed out that several combatant soldiers had already "tagged" themselves in the satellite imagery of the location.  (Security concerns preclude us from posting the actual demonstration in this article.)

Where could this project lead?  "I can't disclose all of the next steps," said Bailey, "but let's just say that geographic analysis of your Farmville properties will soon become much easier."

More details about this project may be found here.

2010 FalconView Symposium

This is just a reminder to sign up for the 2010 FalconView Symposium.  Yours truly will be presenting a session on ArcGIS integration with FalconView and the FalconView Common Data Interfaces.  (Chris Bailey has stolen my topic of choice, which includes how to use FalconView with KML and Web Services.)  The conference will be held here at Georgia Tech, and it's a great chance to get a chance to ask questions to the FalconView developers without paying the big bucks for a full FalconView course.

Open Street Maps in FalconView

I thought this was too neat not to share.  Here is a sample of the new Open Street Map base map type drawn in FalconView 4.3.0.707.  (Note that the red line is a route being drawn from a KML file.)

FalconView for Linux

Developed over 15 years ago, the first version of FalconView was designed to run on PC DOS.  FalconView 2.0 for Windows 3.1 appeared shortly thereafter and, since then, FalconView has been an exclusively Windows-based application.  Now, thanks to internal funding by Georgia Tech, a Linux-based version of FalconView is running in the development labs at Georgia Tech.  The goal is to create a cross-platform code base for FalconView.  This will allow FalconView to run in multiple operating systems, like Linux or VxWorks and to support desktop, portable, embedded and mobile devices.  This experimental version currently includes support for the various base map types, the Points Overlay and GPS trails (with more features to come).  Map management is currently performed by the desktop version of FalconView feeding a cross-platform SQLite database for map coverage support.  Georgia Tech hopes to obtain sponsor funding to bring other features to the cross-platform version of FalconView.  Stay tuned for further developments in this area.

FalconView 4.3 Renamed to FalconView 4.2.1

At the request of it's major sponsors, Georgia Tech is renaming FalconView 4.3 to FalconView 4.2.1.  Sorry for the confusion.

KML in FalconView 4.3

I'm a fan of Google Earth: having used a handful of 3D map viewers, I've found that GE is hard to beat.  Sometimes, though, it's nice to be able to view maps, charts and imagery in a 2D setting, where it's often easier to visualize a route or a mission plan.  FalconView 4.3 includes the capability to open KML and KMZ so that you can view your data in the 3D environment of Google Earth, or in the 2D environment of FalconView, whichever is better suited to your particular need.  We support KML ground overlays, time-dependent KML (use the FalconView time control), regionated KML, screen overlays and all types of placemarks (other than 3D models, which we draw as points so that you can see where they would draw in a 3D view and get the metadata associated with them).  Here are a few screen captures of the same KML data being drawn in FalconView, Google Earth, and WEdge.  Click on the image to see the full-size screen capture.

(Notice that the second image from FalconView is being shown on top of Open Street Map data, which is available as a base map in FalconView build 4.3.0.707, available from the FalconView web site.)

[[ Update: I forgot to mention that we're using Google's libkml to parse KML input. ]]