Touched by a Multi-Touch World

2009 ESRI Federal Users’ Conference – Washington DC

By Art Kalinski, GISP

The ESRI Federal User Conference, held February 18-20 this year, was a good forum for GIS practitioners and vendors to share new information — and to commiserate. Since the event took place in Washington, D.C., it was no surprise that the economy worked its way into most informal discussions.

Many attendees that I talked with indicated mixed experiences: although some budgets are shrinking, putting certain projects on hold, the proposed massive federal spending on infrastructure bodes well for GIS usage. Overall, the prognosis was positive; the current economic situation promises a slight silver lining for GIS. The example of hardware stores doing well in a good economy, and even better in a poor economy, seems an appropriate analogy.

Although there were no significant new “tools” in the “hardware store,” there were many refinements of existing software on display. ESRI and other spatial application builders continue the path toward integration, with GIS being a desktop, server, mobile device, or Web application.

Both Google and Microsoft had expo booths demonstrating applications that integrate with ESRI products, bringing the best of both worlds together. The ESRI/Microsoft Silverlight integration of Virtual Earth was especially compelling. The result is GIS functionality in a much more graphically engaging environment. The big release of this integration will take place later this month, at the ESRI Developer Summit.

What’s in Store for ArcGIS

Dangermond and his staff demonstrated some of the new features and performance improvements in ArcGIS 9.3.1, which is planned for the second quarter of this year. They also discussed version 9.4, scheduled for release within a year.

An especially interesting new capability that is currently available through the Web but will be part of version 9.4 is the Layer Package, which I’d describe as a GeoPDF “slice.” By that I mean that a user can create a map layer in ArcGIS and then export that layer as a complete package, including the data, the layer, and the symbology and cartography. So just as MAPublisher or GeoPDFs preserve the cartography, Layer Packages do the same, but for only one layer. This should be a great help to those that are cartographically challenged. Users will be able to e-mail the Layer Packages as well as publish them on CDs, or through ArcGIS Online for mash-up applications.

Other aspects of version 9.4 include cartographic templates (another crutch for the cartographically challenged), CAD integration, better image integration, and 3D analytics to compete in the BIM world. There’s also something called “sketching” — a geographic design tool to display not what is, but what could or should be.

The Magic Touch

It looks like the multi-touch-screen environment will become commonplace, especially with the upcoming release of Windows 7. ESRI already has preliminary applications being tested for that environment. Is multi-touch just gee-whiz technology, or will it actually help people “raise the bar”? I don’t know; the jury is still out. I had the same uncertainty about oblique imagery, until I saw the significant positive impact it had on non-GIS professionals.

DiamondTouch Table being operated by two users.

One impressive device I saw in the expo that fits this new multi-touch environment was the DiamondTouch table from Circle Twelve. I’ve seen many similar devices, including the first-generation touch tables from Northrop Grumman, numerous other tables, touch-screen computers, a huge touch wall from Lockheed Martin, and even the iPhone. What separated the DiamondTouch table from most others was its price — it was in the $10,000 range, compared to the six-figure prices of earlier tables — and that it’s very intuitive.

The DiamondTouch is able to keep track not only of multiple touches, but also multiple users. The upshot of that is that a group of people can gather around the table to collaborate on a project. Each member of the group can work on the table, which is able to distinguish the different users. But it doesn’t end there; these tables can be networked so the collaboration and identification of users can be maintained in remote locations. This would be a tremendous tool for emergency command centers, and since the operation is so intuitive, the technology could improve communication rather than interfere with it.

Annotations are shown in different colors, depending on which user made them.

Adam Bogue, the president of Circle Twelve, explained that the table was successful because of the ability to accommodate multiple users and because users had very fine and precise control when working on the table. The touch can be as precise as a mouse-click. Note the data in the picture below, which is normally not visible to the table’s users. It shows how precisely the table “sees” each user and interprets their inputs. Perception of the touches is very sensitive: a fine finger movement is interpreted differently from a fist or palm swipe.

Touch, as the table sees it. Note the fine increments that define the touch.

Bogue explained how a command center set up two tables, one horizontal and one vertical, as a visualization and collaboration tool. Ortho imagery was placed on the horizontal table, while oblique imagery was placed on the vertical. The ability to look down on the ortho and then up at the oblique felt very natural and speeded the perception of the common operational picture. Bogue also indicated that Circle Twelve’s software is designed to integrate with ArcGIS so multiple users could each create annotations, which are automatically saved as separate Shapefiles. He also indicated how useful the tables are for WebEx conferences. This is one of those technologies that is really quite helpful when done right, and Circle Twelve nailed it.

Looking Forward — and Back

Although there were more presentations than any one individual could attend due to the multiple tracks, this conference still seemed more digestible than ESRI’s annual mega-event: the International User Conference. There were only 3,000 attendees in D.C., compared to the 13,000 who will be in San Diego this summer. Despite the crowds, I will be there, and I’ll be sure to report on what I learn.

One note from last month’s column on voxels: I was properly taken to the woodshed (or Bosun’s Locker, for us Navy people) by one of my readers last month regarding voxels. Robert Meyer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, pointed my attention to a 1995 paper by Alvy Ray Smith titled, “A Pixel Is Not a Little Square! (And a Voxel Is Not a Little Cube)” The full screed can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.alvyray.com/Acrobat/6_Pixel.pdf.

In his paper, Smith correctly states that although we display our data as little grid squares or phosphorous rectangles, these are representations of a sample point — and a point, as any GISP should know, is not a polygon. And by extension, a point is also not a cube. I feel chastised, but somewhat honored and relieved that I was corrected by no one less than a rocket scientist. Thank you, Robert — the beers are on me next time I’m in Southern California.