Building Mapnik on Windows

This is just a short note to folks who may be interested in building Mapnik on Windows.  I've posted some detailed notes on the build steps here.  Copies of the source code that I fetched to build with are in that same Sandbox folder (forgive me for making entire copies of source trees, but I wanted to have the exact versions that I built against in case we ever need them for debugging).   I built under Visual Studio 2005, but it would probably be easy to adapt these notes to later versions of Visual Studio.  (Thanks to Ben Moore whose notes from a few years ago were very valuable in the process.)

FalconView 5.0 to Include PC Sensor Based Environmental Mapping

One of the most exciting features of FalconView 5.0 will be the inclusion of environmental mapping using components found on most laptop computers.  Just like bats "see" their surroundings with SONAR, FalconView 5.0 will allow users to map their surroundings using high-frequency pulses emitted from the speakers.  The echoes received by the PC microphone will be processed to create a map of PC surroundings.  To complement this SONAR technology, 5.0 will include visual processing of surroundings through the laptop's built-in camera (multiple laptops and/or input devices can be linked to create a true 3D picture).  The last important feature of the "Sensor Based Map Overlay" is the use of wireless networking cards to create RADAR images of the user's environment.  Using advanced sensor-fusion technologies, all of these inputs will be combined to create a nearly perfect replica of the situational environment of the user, which can be visualized and saved via the FalconView overlay.  We invite you to examine the technical white paper found here.