barnabu
Tourist
Reged: 05/11/06
Posts: 85
Loc: Nottingham, UK
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Google Earth 4.0.2693 or later required.
This is a time-slider animated model of the 109 year old ferris wheel in Prater park, Vienna.
The Riesenrad famously appeared in the post-war film noir The Third Man.
Recommended Settings:
- View it in Google Earth 4, with the Terrain on
- Minimize the time slider, set the repeat mode to 'Wrap', put it on the fastest speed, then press play to animate.
- Select the 30-cars option to see the wheel as it was originally, (up until the second World War,) with twice the number of cars.
Note: it takes a while for all the frames of the animation to load in.
Filesize - 268kB
Edited by barnabu (01/22/07 02:20 PM)
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barnabu
Tourist
Reged: 05/11/06
Posts: 85
Loc: Nottingham, UK
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I've updated the original file , with a more detailed version, and a made a major technical change to the way the whole thing is put together.
Instead of using a separate model for each of the 20 frames of the animation. I've cut back the number of Collada models to 3 and used the kml to instance them in different ways.
The 3 Collada components are:
- the static A-frame support structure.
- the wheel, which I gradually rotate by changing the value in the tilt tag in every Time-Spanned element.
- a model of a single carriage, instanced 15 (or 30) times each frame. With changing latitude, longitude and altitude values.
File size is reduced from 3.8MB to a much more modest 268kB.
Loading time is increased slightly, but the effect as each element appears is kind of interesting - rather like a flourescent light coming on.
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syzygy
Master Cartographer
Reged: 10/06/05
Posts: 1530
Loc: Hungary
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nice one again barnabu! -thank you! 5*s at first glance to your technical innovation 
how do you manage to tilt as just you were looking up to the sky?
(as seen on screenshot)
my tilt function works just 90 degrees...  
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barnabu
Tourist
Reged: 05/11/06
Posts: 85
Loc: Nottingham, UK
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Thanks syzygy!
Quote:
how do you manage to tilt as just you were looking up to the sky?
(as seen on screenshot)
Flight control mode: Ctrl + G. Then hold down the left mouse button and pull back your mouse.
Ctrl + T to go back to normal navigation.
You can do this too: 
First I knew about this mode was when Frank4 mentioned it in his blog, a couple of months ago - so you weren't the only one!
- James
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syzygy
Master Cartographer
Reged: 10/06/05
Posts: 1530
Loc: Hungary
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it works! -thank you!
how many models i have to check again...  
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Frequently Asked Questions have already been Answered
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avatar legend
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Sanga
Tourist
Reged: 12/09/05
Posts: 37
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Splendid!
Initially I could load and play the animation in 15 cars mode. After I loaded in 30 cars mode, all cars merge into each other and remains the same even when switching back to 15 cars. It cannot play anymore. Maybe my PC cannot handle...
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::: Bring me a man who doesn't want money and I'll give him some. :::
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barnabu
Tourist
Reged: 05/11/06
Posts: 85
Loc: Nottingham, UK
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Hi Sanga.
Thanks for the feedback.
Not sure exactly what the problem is, but it sounds like what happens when the time span control isn't completely minimized.
If that isn't the answer, try toggling off any other overlays, models etc and increase memory cache size. The wheel does use a fair amount of memory.
- James
P.S. I know it's a while back now, but I really enjoyed the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower models you posted a year ago. They were one of the things that attracted me to this forum in the first place.
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Sanga
Tourist
Reged: 12/09/05
Posts: 37
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Now I can play properly. It's wonderful!
My confusion was in "Minimize the timeslider"; when you said "time span control" that cleared things. The animation in my PC isn't completely smooth, then again this must be hardware deficiency on my end. Isn't there a way to reduce the polygon count? Is this thing entirely coded or combination of codes and 3D model? Sorry, I am novice in this matter.
Now that you mention the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower models, the latter involved lots of judicious modelling to keep the polygon count low yet convey sufficient feel of the tower. If your animation model can benefit from this, I am most willing to contribute to your effort.
I have been thinking of texturing the Taj Mahal model, but work has been taking me out of station continously for the past six months.
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::: Bring me a man who doesn't want money and I'll give him some. :::
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barnabu
Tourist
Reged: 05/11/06
Posts: 85
Loc: Nottingham, UK
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Thanks!
Glad you got it sorted.
Quote:
The animation in my PC isn't completely smooth, then again this must be hardware deficiency on my end. Isn't there a way to reduce the polygon count?
Yes, but I think it would be tricky to do so without significantly altering the model's appearance.
The animation is only 20 frames long, and one loop of the 'Time slider' on the fastest setting seems to be about 2.5 seconds. The frame-rate probably isn't high enough for it to appear completely smooth for everyone.
Anyhow, I have a few other things planned for this, including animating its construction. I need all the polygons I can lay my hands on!
Quote:
... Is this thing entirely coded or combination of codes and 3D model?
A combination, but mainly 3d model. The kml scripting just tells GE where to locate, and how to orient the 3 component models, at different points in time.
The component parts are individually editable in SketchUp, but I make several (non-essential) tweaks to them afterwards, including changing line colour, and running them through kmzcleanup , which reduces redundancy in the model files and makes them fully compliant with the Collada standard.
Quote:
... I have been thinking of texturing the Taj Mahal model
That would be great to see! Especially now the latest Google Earth release fixes the problem of texture darkening.
- James
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jpwade
Builder
Reged: 03/12/06
Posts: 593
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Quote:
Instead of using a separate model for each of the 20 frames of the animation. I've cut back the number of Collada models to 3 and used the kml to instance them in different ways.
the above change puts this model from fantastic to Extraordinaire !
the model structured in this way runs smooooooth .... both with 15 or 30 buckets.
expanding the time to max and allowing all instances to load, then reducing the time slowly to min. allows me to view the means at which you set the time occurances.
kick it up another notch and think along the line of spiro-graph and a scrambler ride, that would really peak out viewers brain activity. *grin*
java spiro-graph
http://www.wordsmith.org/anu/java/spirograph.html#display
or try:
sourceforge:
http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/samples/spirograph.html
i really like how clean this model is
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JP Wade - Click for Permissions
www.czmartin.com/jpw - Contact & list of models submitted to GE Forum
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