Make that 3/3

Thanks to this thread, I was finally able to crack the missing piece of the CZML output puzzle for mapguide-rest, and we can now output point, line and polygon features as CZML to Cesium.

CZML is a representation of a Layer Definition in mapguide-rest, this means we will get pre-evaluated properties to play with such as:

• Tooltips
• Hyperlinks
• Elevation/Extrusion settings

We currently use this information as follows

Tooltips get written as the description property of each CZML packet, allowing such information to be displayed in the Cesium information window when the object is selected.

Now as the above screenshot shows, there's no real visual way to know what object you selected. I'm still figuring out if there's a way in CZML or the Cesium APIs to specify how a selected object looks so it can stand out.

If the Layer Definition has elevation/extrusion settings applied, that's when the fun stuff happens. We apply the extruded value in the CZML packet for each feature, giving us 2.5D features. This extrusion only applies for polygon features at the moment.

Oh, and did you know Cesium works pretty well on any WebGL capable mobile browser?

Pretty cool stuff. Now that we've nailed down the fundamentals, it's time to figure out how much visual fidelity we can preserve from MapGuide to CZML:

• Can we transfer thematics?
• Can we transfer labels?
• Can we transfer patterns?
• Others?

Fun times ahead!