from film to the internet: 35 years of cartographic animation

From Film to the Internet: 35 years of

cartographic animation

Michael PetersonGeography - University of Nebraska Omaha

Personal Landmarks

1975 - Super 8 Film animation

1986 - Interactive animation with Macintosh

Types of animation

1995 - Interactive and Animated Cartography book

1996 - Movie animations. Animation with sound.

2003-2007 - Flight animations

2011 - Thoughts about interaction and animation

History of Cartographic Animation

Conjecture about first map animated map

Maps in stone/paper for most of modern human existence

Level of map

interaction/

animationTim

e

198

0-

199

0

250

0 B

C

Ice age of cartography

1939 Cartographic Animation

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German invasion of Warsaw, Poland

Disney

My Personal Journey

1972-1976 University of Wisconsin-River Falls, BA

Film animation with Super 8

1976-1978 Boston University, MA

Programming in Fortran

1978-1981 State University of New York at Buffalo, Ph.D.

More programming in Fortran / Pascal

1981-1982 University of Zürich, Switzerland, Post-Doc

Super 8 - 1975

MacChoro 1985-1991

Macintosh program for Choropleth mapping

Purchased 512KB, “Big Mac” in 1985 for $2,500

Ported a choropleth mapping program from a DEC VAX computer

Program written in Fortran

Many late hours:

Adapting to event-driven computing

menus and dialogs

1985 Big Mac

512 KB of memory

400 KB floppy-drive

Display

Bit-map (pixels either on or off), no color

512 pixels

34

2 p

ixels

How MacChoro worked

Polygon-based map file

Spreadsheet-type data file

Map update done logically by class interval rather than alphabetically

16 shadings, up to 16 classes

Six different methods of data classification - Equal Interval, Quantile, Standard Deviation, Natural Breaks, Unclassed*, User-Defined

User Interface

Map Elements

Map, Title, Legend, Neatline, Text1, Text2

User-defined bounding box to define size of each element

User input with dialogs and mouse

MacChoro Map

Generalization Animation

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Temporal Animation

Classification Animation

Trend Animation

Map Storage/Comparison

Movie Editing Programs

1993 - Adobe Premiere

Frame-based animation

With individual maps created with MacChoro

1995 - Story maps concept

Generalization Animation

Percent of births to mothers under 20 years of age; 2 to 7 classes

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Temporal Animation

Nebraska Growth in Irrigation by County

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Classification Animation

Different methods of data classification

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Spatial Trend

Age of Population by Percent, Omaha, Nebraska, by census tract

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Interactive and Animated Cartography

1995 - Prentice-Hall

Story Maps

University of Hawaii - 1995

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Adobe Premiere

Motown Maps

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Internet Phase - Javascript

1997 --> Mouseover// TASK: PRELOADING AND RENAMING IMAGES (SEE THE EXPLANATION ABOVE){picker_n = new Image(200,200);picker_n.src = "picker.gif";red_n = new Image(200,200);red_n.src = "red.gif";blue_n = new Image(200,200);blue_n.src = "blue.gif";yellow_n = new Image(200,200);yellow_n.src = "yellow.gif";

Internet Phase

Interactive animation with Javascript - Mouseover - 1997

Flight Atlas Project

2002-2006

Interest in Frequently Updated Maps (FUMs)

Internet Frequently Updated Maps (IFUMs)

In cooperation with FlyteComm, Inc.

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

Background on Flight Tracking

Canada and the USA

Data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is made available to venture capital companies that attempt to provide services with this data

FlyteTrax program from FlyteComm

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

Herndon, Virginia (near Washington D.C.)

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

Flights by Hour over US & Canada

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23

Time of Day

Number of Flights

Series1

Average: 3415; High: 5300; Low: 800

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

Data made public in 1995

Flight Movement Messages transmitted from the aircraft every minute near airports; every 4 minutes in mid-flight

Since 1998, due to security, transmission of data is delayed by 5-10 minutes

ASDI (Aircraft Situation Display to Industry)

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

Adobe Photoshop

FlightTrax 2002

- Windows-based program for displaying the geographic location of aircraft

- Program connects to the FlyteComm server through the Internet and receives the current database of air traffic activity

- Updates locations every minute

- FlyteTrax receives a radar position report on each aircraft once every 4 minutes when the are in the ARTCC airspace

- Most minute-by-minute positions based on dead reckoning using the last radar position report, the established ground speed at that position report, and the direction established by the prior two position reports

ANIMATED ATLAS

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

AIR TRAFFIC ANIMATION

FlyteTrax 2002

CaptureEze Pro+ Script

Adobe Photoshop+ batch script

Adobe Premiere+ batch script

Virtual Dub

Displays current flight traffic by minute

Collection of single pics (1440 min/day)

Automatic enhancement of pictures

Construction of an analog clock

DivX compression

1500 MB

7 MB – 15 MB

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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Time

Number of flights

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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United Airlines - night traffic from west to east

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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Bombardier CR-J

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

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JFK New Yorkxt

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

FLIGHT TRACKING PATTERNS

Adobe Photoshop

Other Patterns

- Non-hub airline - Southwest Airlines - direct city-to-city

- Boeing 737

- All night Los Angeles

- The effect of zooming on speed (New York)

- Concorde Supersonic

- All flights

- Fedex - overnight package delivery

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Southwest Airlines

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Boeing 737

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All Night LA

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Speed increases with zoom

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Concorde lands in New York

^

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All Flights

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Fedex

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

AIR TRAFFIC ANIMATION

Adobe Photoshop

ÜberblickANIMATED ATLAS

Air Traffic over North America

PUBLICATION

Adobe Photoshop

Peterson, M. & Wendel, J. (2006) Animated Atlas: Air Traffic over North America. Omaha: Cartography and GIS Laboratory.

Final comments

Animation is an important technique in our use and understanding of spatial data. Cartographic animation demonstrates that individual maps are only a snap-shot in time. One should ask: What was before? What will come after? What trends would be evident if the time element could be viewed as an animation? The individual map is a snap-shot not only in time but also in terms of the data. What non-temporal trends would be evident if a map were viewed along with other related data sets (e.g., age distribution in a city)? Finally, the individual map is a snap-shot in the choice of the representational forms that were used to depict the world. The use of different symbols or data classifications can also constitute an animation. Interactive and Animated Cartography (1995)

The Problem

Cartographic animation is not widely used. Why?

Top Five Problems

1.File size

Distribution dependent on the Internet

Internet users are impatient.

Animation files take too long to download. Compressed video formats (youtube) are unacceptable for maps.

Top Five Problems

2.Animations are hard to make

Essentially consist of many maps, requiring multiple data sets

May require different levels of generalization

GIS programs either don’t incorporate animation or have poor implementations

Top Five Problems

3.No monetary incentive

Why make many maps when most people are satisfied with one

Top Five Problems

4.File format

No standard file format for cartographic animation

Will the file be readable by different computers?

Will the file be readable in the future?

Top Five Problems

5.Animation is by definition a non-interactive experience

With an interactive map, you can always change something

With paper map, you can always look around the map

With animation, you look at a very small area of the screen

With animation, you just sit and watch - and this is

boring

The Future of Animation

1.3-D movie technology will transfer to computers

3-D map animations

2.Faster Internet capable of transmitting larger files

3.Better software to make animations

4.More interactive playback/creation

5.People may eventually expect that maps be animated