ESRI has begun to post some demonstration videos of ArcGIS Explorer. If you’ve been trying to figure out how ArcGIS Explorer will allow you to perform GIS tasks, this first show shows you a model (created with Model Builder in ArcGIS) for a site analysis looking at things such as slope and networks (I didn’t hear any sound so I couldn’t really figure out what the model was showing).
That said, you’ll see how GIS professionals will be able to leverage ArcGIS Explorer to allow them to push what was once complex analysis to just about any user.
Update - I’m thinking that ESRI should probably convert these videos to Flash movies rather than keep them as WMP. Anything to keep them more platform and browser agnostic.
4 responses so far ↓
1
Anon
// Mar 8, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Nice scoop!
It should now be pretty clear (at least it is to me) that ESRI is not creating a ‘Google Earth’ killer but a ‘GIS for dummies’ by copying the user experience of GE.
I can’t see Google ever going this far with their product and wonder if they will have to be settle for dominating the consumer market. Google Earth is clearly the standard so far and the product has the backing of some very deep pockets. It is perfect for casual ‘view-ers’.
Thanks Google for keeping the GIS Vendors on their toes. The commercial market (the professional ‘do-ers’) is clearly benefiting with a ‘free for all’ product that has potential like this.
Can’t wait to see what MapInfo come out with…
2
Brian Timoney
// Mar 9, 2006 at 10:25 am
With all due respect, the above anonymous post is example enough of the problematic mentality of too many in the GIS industry–
1) the implication that somehow everything is OK now that ESRI has seemingly replicated the GE “user experience”–as if the ‘user experience’ was something that needed to be paid attention to starting around the summer of 2005. Face it, it was the horrible user experience of so many web mapping sites for so many years that let Google garner so much hype last year.
2) “GIS for Dummies”?? As in, anyone who doesn’t use ArcMap every day? Well, the terrible truth is that the folks who make the high-dollar, high-impact decisions in this world tend not to be the same people intimately familiar with geoprocessing routines. So presumably any tool that will let this segment interrogate and understand spatial data would be a good thing, right? Or is there a part of you that, like the village priest in 17th century Europe who was the only one in town who knew Latin but had to face up to Scripture published in the vernacular, is a little miffed that your niche monopoly is being threatened?
3) Whatever Google’s eventual place in the firmament, the assumption that the spatial world will continue to revolve around ESRI and its little brother MapInfo is laughable. The increasing presence of spatial databases, open-standards for web-based viewers (SVG, WMS, etc.), let alone all manner of open-source tools for every aspect of spatial data storage and manipulation would indicate challenges on multiple fronts for the incumbents.
Time to sign off–those ‘dummies’ need attending.
BT
3
Christian
// Mar 10, 2006 at 5:18 am
1) I totally agree. GE has achieved within a view months what digital cartography intended over the past 15 years.
2) As far as I can tell high-impact decision makers don’t bother about geoprocessing. They wouldn’t even have a look at a tool like AGX. They ask for finished analysises, presented on a single slide if possible. IMHO AGX is aimed to serve experts who deal with any kind of spatial information but consider tools like ArcMap as too complicated for their purpose. “Dummy” is the wrong word in “GIS for Dummies”.
3) Let’s assume that data production is still the core, the base of most geospatial services. I doubt that companies like ESRI, Intergraph, etc., who enable and serve this core very well, will take a back seat just because of some new standards or technologies.
4
Eamonn Doyle
// Mar 10, 2006 at 9:01 am
Fundamentally ArcGIS Explorer is not about a competition between ESRI and Google. Is about exposing the power of ArcObjects for exploitation using browser based technologies, its about harnessing the power of geporocessing to aid decision support, its about producing useable and repeatable process chains for spatial data that are universally accessible. There is no context in which this can be seen as a bad thing!
Both Google Earth and ArcGIS Explorer are complex products that require a long gestation period anybody who thinks one is a knee jerk reaction to the other is surely missing the point.
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