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Digital
Earth > TerravisionTM
> User Guide >
Getting
Started
Getting Started
Overview
TerraVisionTM is a distributed,
interactive terrain visualization
system developed by SRI International. It allows users to navigate, in
real time, through a 3-D graphical representation of a real landscape
created from elevation data and aerial images of that landscape.
The TerraVision system is available under Windows and Silicon Graphics
machines. It comes as a standalone application as well as a Netscape
plugin version and an ActiveX component. This user guide is provided
to give you help installing, running, and using the TerraVision
system. For the latest version of all TerraVision resources, please
refer to the web page
http://www.tvgeo.com/.
Installing TerraVisionTM -
Windows
You can download the full TerraVisionTM
distribution for Windows from the TerraVision Download
Page, or the Netscape plugin and ActiveX component from the
TerraVision Plugins
Download Page.
In each case, there is an InstallShield executable that you
can download and run in order to perform all of the installation
for you. These executables are digitally signed by SRI International.
Running TerraVisionTM - Windows
Once installed, you can run TerraVision by locating its menu entry
in the Start/Programs menu, access by clicking on the "Start" button
to the bottom-left corner of your desktop.
For the full version of TerraVision, you will find a menu entry
called "TerraVision 5.1" with an option "Run TerraVision Browser".
For the plugins version of TerraVision, you will find a menu entry
called "TerraVision Plugin 5.1" with a number of options - try
the "Netscape Plugin/Run TerraVision inside Netscape" example first
(obviously, you will need to have installed the Netscape web browser
for this to work).
Viewing Terrain Datasets - Windows
The first thing that you will probably want to do is to look at
some terrain. If you have downloaded the TerraVision Plugins, then
you can just go to one of the example web pages provided with the
distribution to see TerraVision flying round a number of terrain
datasets served from the SRI web server.
For the full Tcl/Tk version, you can either go to the "File/
Open Terrain" menu to view a specific terrain model from the
SRI web site, or you can use the new "File/Open DotGeo" capability
to automatically discover all datasets in your view (only works in
2D mode at the current time).
Installing TerraVisionTM -
Unix
You can download the full TerraVisionTM
distribution for IRIX 6.5 from the TerraVision Download
Page. This comes as a compressed tar archive.
Note that there are currently two versions: a Tcl/Tk version
and an X/Motif version. The Tcl/Tk version is recommended as it is
the one being actively developed. Let's say you wish
to install the Tcl/Tk distribution into the directory
/homedir/TerraVision. You could do this as follows:
% cd /homedir
% gzcat tv-tcltk-v5.tar.gz | tar xf -
(N.B. the percent symbol '%' is meant to represent the shell prompt
and is not part of the command). Note that the distribution extracts
into a TerraVision directory by default.
Configuring TerraVisionTM - Unix
In order for TerraVision to operate correctly, you
should update your login script (e.g. .cshrc for csh)
to include the TVHOME environment variable which
points to the directory where you have installed TerraVision, e.g.
# csh script to setup environment for TerraVision
setenv TVHOME /homedir/TerraVision
set path = ($path $TVHOME/bin)
Additionally, if you are installing the Tcl/Tk version of TerraVision
and you do not already have Tcl/Tk 8.3 installed on your system, then
you will need to update your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to
point to the two Tcl/Tk shared libraries that are supplied with the
TerraVision distribution. You should add this line to you shell start
up script also:
# csh syntax to add Tcl/Tk shared libs to search path
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $TVHOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
This is done to help TerraVisionTM
find a few support files such as images used in the GUI, but more
importantly, it is used to locate all of the Tcl/Tk scripts that are
used to build the actual GUI.
If you do not set a TVHOME environment variable, then
TerraVisionTM will use the current
directory where you ran TerraVisionTM from.
Running TerraVisionTM - Unix
Once you have added the above environment variable and path update to
your login script, you should source that file (e.g. "source
~/.cshrc"), and then you can run the Tcl/Tk version of
TerraVisionTM by typing the following
command:
% TclTV
Or you can run the X/Motif version of TerraVision by typing
the command.
% TerraVision
Viewing Terrain Datasets - Unix
For the full Tcl/Tk or X/Motif version of TerraVision, you can
either load up a specific terrain database, or in the case of the
Tcl/Tk version, you can use the new "Open DotGeo" option to
automatically discover all datasets in your view (only works in
2D mode at the current time).
To load a specific terrain model and see something interesting
in TerraVision, here are some steps to take:
- Make sure that you have some terrain data! You can browse dataset
from SRI's http://www.tvgeo.com/TileSets web server or you can
download a sample dataset from the TerraVision Download
page.
- Tell TerraVisionTM to open
the dataset. You can do this by going to the File/Open Terrain menu
option. For more details, see the documentation for the
File Menu (Tcl/Tk) or
or File Menu (Motif).
- Select a view of the dataset (this step is optional for the
Tcl/Tk interface). You can view the terrain from a 2-D pan/zoom
interface, or a full 3-D fly through. For more details, see the
descriptions for the
View Menu (Tcl/Tk) or
View Menu (Motif).
Copyright ©2000 SRI International. All rights reserved.
For more information, please contact: digital-earth@ai.sri.com.
Last updated: Wednesday, 10-Apr-2002 20:08:18 PDT.
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