Arc2Earth Now Creates Map Tiles for Google Maps and Virtual Earth

November 10th, 2006 · 7 Comments · ArcGIS Desktop, ESRI, Extensions, GIS, Google, Google Maps, Microsoft, Virtual Earth

Brian Flood has a very interesting post on the new big feature of Arc2Earth. The ability to create map tiles of maps that you’ve created in ArcMap and publish them to the web. Brian has figured out a way to simply do this using Amazon S3 for storage and either the Google Maps, Virtual Earth or even OpenLayers. The result is a web based map, that can utilize cartography that you create in ArcMap, that requires NO SERVER SOFTWARE. Plus Arc2Earth is smart enough to create markers from any layers you choose to give your new web map more functionality. Brian is looking for existing users of Arc2Earth to volunteer for the beta. Roll over to Brian’s blog to see how this all works. I’m excited to see how this works.

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7 responses so far ↓

1 Dave // Nov 10, 2006 at 11:26 am

Kudos to Brian for bringing the kungfu!

I’ve been mulling the idea of creating a tile cache directly from ArcMap for a while now, and apparently while I was mulling, Brian was coding! Anyhow, I’m glad that someone has taken action on this. Really, I just want an option to create slippy maps from ArcGIS w/o having to use Server. I’m thinking that OpenLayers and a nice tile cache are gonna put a big ol dent in the current “IMS” market.

Dave
2 Brian Timoney // Nov 10, 2006 at 12:18 pm

James:

Put me in the camp of guys who’ve been mulling the “roll your own tile-server” functionality for months but haven’t gotten around to, you know, actually doing anything about it.

In some ways the output to tiles that can be dropped into VE, GMaps, or OpenLayers may be more potent than the Arc–>KML conversion. Because what we’re hearing from customers is that the already-initiated love Google Earth, but they’re concerned about the modestly tech savvy downloading the app, installing it, and figuring out the interface. (Sure, all of the above is trivial for readers of GIS blogs, but the size of the audience out there who’s never interacted with a spatial context any more complicated than MapQuest is enormous). In other words, if you can boil it down to one hyperlink and, voila, a useful, somewhat interactive experience of custom information in a map format–then there’s great market potential there.

Another ramification of roll-your-own-tiles is that the fruits of good cartographic design can more easily be shared: you don’t have to settle for merely slapping placemarks on top of the default VE/GMaps/Yahoo tiles. As the ESRI Map Gallery shows year after year, there’s some great work being done that never sees the light beyond a particular shop, gov’t agency, or three days hanging up at the SD Convention Center.

In short, lots of things to like about this particular distribution trend…..

Brian
3 James Fee // Nov 10, 2006 at 12:38 pm

Brian, I think simple things get implemented and this type of “web mapping” is simple. You don’t need to use S3 so if you have a good server, you can host the tiles yourself (but S3 is a great backup IMO).

Lets face it, most ArcIMS sites are really just a simple view with some sort of identify. Why pay ESRI all that money for ArcIMS and in turn get a much better looking map (sure you can use ArcMap Server to get better looking maps than ArcXML but this solution gives you the same look, but at a fraction of the cost).

I know others have been talking about similar ideas and Arc2Earth supporting the OSGeo Tiling Spec, you can use what ever compliant client you wish.
4 Brian Flood // Nov 10, 2006 at 1:08 pm

just some quick info

1) I don’t see this replacing full functioning IMS sites but it is very helpful for small/medium viewers or ad-hoc sites (think - we need an emergency response map up ASAP)

2) OSGEO Tile Spec - this is a work in progress but the “global profile” that mimics the traditional GYM providers (merc projection, 20 known map levels etc) is being supported. kudos to all the guys over there for taking all of that into account. The metadata needed to drive a MTS client will be generated by A2E and any future client can access your tiles through that metadata (even as static files!)

3) S3 support - this is mainly aimed at people who don’t even have a server to host simele files. There are plenty of ArcMap users who would benefit greatly from publishing maps online but have no time/money/inclination to setup a server at all. S3 serves as a publishing platform for them.

also, and this should not be overlooked, S3 provides scalability, real scalability that is usually only available to the big guys. Your files are redundently stored so disk contention or geographical location does not affect performance. in short, you *should* get the performance of the larger mapping providers. your single web server might not be able to handle that type of access. again, its just an option so YMMV.

cheers
brian
5 Jeff // Nov 12, 2006 at 8:51 am

Hey all, you are right, such tiled maps from ArcMap are a good approach for replacing “simple” IMS sites.

There is a german product doing this already very well for simple maps. You can even put some info-querying and stand search functionalities ….

You need no server app, and the soft costs a 1/10 of ArcIMS.

Have a look at the HTML ImageMapper:

http://www.alta4.com/eng/products_e/im/index.php
6 Ole Seidel // Nov 23, 2006 at 4:13 pm

Jeff, thanks for mentioning our product.
HTML ImageMapper has been around since 1998 and is now in version 10 using AJAX technology to get a slick user experience.
When I first came accross ArcView 3.1 (remember: this was the first ArcView version able to export to JPG - and JPG, besides GIF, being the only raster format supported by browsers back then) I realised the potential of an ArcView Extension to export map tiles from ArcView. Our motivation was to build the first WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet application for ArcView exporting to the web.
We have a broad customer base around the world.
We’re now looking into serving the image tiles to google earth. We already have the feature of exporting world files (tfw, jpw, …) so it shouldn’t be that hard.
Meanwhile we invite everybody to download and take a look at the free evaluation copy available from our web site. Any comments are highly welcome.

Ole
7 Ole Seidel // Feb 20, 2008 at 2:02 am

Advanced tile mangement and scheduling for creating tiles in a batch mode is now available with HTML ImageMapper NG, build 22.
Take a look at
http://www.alta4.com/eng/products_e/im/index.php

For most of you, advanced label management has been implemented to prevent doublication of labels.

Feedback is highly welcome as we are developing the next version due in April of 2008.