Google maps clone in flash (Week of show off part 1 of 3)
Intro
This article is part 1 of 3 of a series of articles
So the first project I have chosen to show off is essentially a clone of google maps I wrote as a pet project a few months ago.
Technically there is nothing really special about this, and it has indeed been done before by the guys over at flashearth.com. I did however make my own implementation anyway as it seemed like a fun challenge, and a chance to play around with the tween class.
The system can currently show data from 3 different data sources; Blur marble, Second Life and SDSS. Notice that I did not implement any earth data, except for blue marble which was my original test data, as the people over at flashearth.com has already master that to perfection.
Hint: Drag with your mouse to move the map, use the zoom buttons or your mouse wheal to zoom.
Nasa Blue marble
As stated the engine was originally written to be used blue marble data, as they provide huge images which are perfect for such. The images are hosted on my own server, and informed people will notice that I do not use the full resolution pictures. The reason for this is that Matthew Lloyd, who where nice enough to write the application to do the image splitting, did not make a system that can handle multiple import sources.
Second Life
While working on the system, I got the idea to use the new open source client for Secound Life to generate map images for this. This did however turn out to be absolutely unnecessary, as they all ready have an API. It was however in javascript so I had to do a bit of decompiling.
Now before you run off to report me to Linden Labs, please notice that they have confirmed that its oki, as long as I maintain there copyright notice.
SDSS
Sloan Digital Sky Survey or in short SDSS, is properly one of the coolest projects out there. Basically it allows you to view and zoom on the night sky, such that you can view millions of starts, and even galaxies. My implementation loads images uses there RD5 API and stitches them together locally in the flash client. The client is however a bit buggy as I never really got the hang of Polar Coordinates.
Again I have obtained a permission to use the data before I made it publicly accessible
View SDSS map (Notice that you can zoom out from the starting position)
FAQ
- The project is 100% a pet project so do not expect any updates, even if you should request such.
- The domain was just one I had in surplus from when I was searching for a domain for barcodepedia
- No you cannot have the source as is, I might make an open source version later, but the code as is is really really bad, and I do not want to share it out of pure embarrassment.