Any complex calculations in Javascript need only be done once to build up each visual component, or to rebuild if it physically changes. The core ideas when working in both are actually pretty similar - building up a set of visual components that are cached and rendered separately (OpenGL vertex buffer objects and SVG elements respectively).
The marriage of WebGL for 3D visualisation and SVG for 2D data presentation also turns out to be a pretty happy one. Sure this was on an i7 processor, but it meant that the core technologies were not going to be the kind of bottleneck that I thought they’d be.Īs it turned out, there was scope for some pretty fundamental optimisations, so now it’s even quick enough on an iPad as well as most of my old Android tablets. I’m actually quite stunned as, even before any optimisation whatsoever, I found that I could build and rebuild the entire Sun-path mesh on every change in pretty well real time. This started out as an experiment to see just how responsive I could make the generation and display of 3D Sun-path diagrams and shadow projections using JavaScript and WebGL. You can set the location using the map by either dragging the locator icon around or clicking in the position you want. You can also use both the popover buttons and information panels located in the top-right to set the date, time and location. It should be fast enough to update in pretty close to real-time as you drag the locator within the map or the date/time in the day-length chart.
The aim was to clearly illustrate the relationship between geographic location and the annual Sun-path. The SVG chart defaults to showing the annual variation in day-length, but you can also select an analemma chart or several different types of 2D Sun-path diagram. This app connects an interactive Google World Map to a 3D Sun-path diagram, shadow map generator and a 2D SVG chart displaying a range of solar information.
0 kommentar(er)
