d3 Draw Only Map Features in Zoomed Bounding Box - d3.js

I've built a map where on hover over of a certain (x,y) coordinate point, a zoomed in mini-map shows up to the side with the hovered point in the center (using code similar to: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/2206590). It works well, but a bit inefficient because it is redrawing the whole map with a new scale and translate every time which I noticed when I took off overflow: hidden from the mini-map in IE.
Is there a built-in way in d3 or TopoJSON to filter map features to only keep those that fall within the bounding box of the zoomed in area?
Thanks!

Related

Isometric Sprites

This might be a stupid question but I'm stuck and can't get passed it. I'm making a isometric game and I have my map built using tiles, I just followed this tutorial to build the map, http://www.binpress.com/tutorial/creating-a-city-building-game-with-sfml/137. But now I don't know how to add character sprites. Do I have to add these sprites using tiles as well or do I just draw the the sprites into position of the screen. Any help would be much appreciated.
As far as I can tell from the engine, just follow the "Textures and Animations" guide and draw the Animation to the screen after you have drawn the tiles. This isn't a complicated engine, so you are only working with 2D sprites being drawn to the screen (the 3D effect is merely tricks of painter's algorithm to make it work...there is no z-axis from what the tutorial indicates)
The depth is done by the order of tile rendering
The same goes for objects,players,etc... Let assume plane XY is parallel with the ground and Z axis is the altitude. Then your grid would be something like this (assuming diamond shape layout):
Order of rendering
You have to handle object,players and stuff sprites in the same way as tiles (and in the same time). so you should render all cells in specific order dependent on your grid layout and sprite combination equation. If your sprites can overwrite already rendered stuff then you should render from the most distant tiles to the closest to the "camera". In that case the blue direction arrow on above image is correct and Z axis should be increasing in the most inner loop.
So now if you got any object,player or stuff placed in cell (x,y,z) then you should render it directly after the cell (x,y,z) was rendered prior to rendering any other cell.
To speed up is a good idea to have objects and players in your tile map as a cell. But for that you have to have the tiles in the right manner and also your map representations must be capable of doing so.

Reposition texture in real time

Is it possible in THREE JS to re-position a texture in real time?
I have a model of a heart and I'm projecting "color maps"/"texture with colors" onto the model but the position of the maps can be a little different each time.
UPDATE
More info:
I have about 20 color maps. They are 80 by 160 pixels. I need to position them on the model. The position of the color maps may differ slightly. Currently I add all the color maps to a big texture and then I load the texture onto the model. That all works just fine.
But sometimes a surgeon feels like a color map needs to be moved over or rotated a little. I can't expect him to change the hard-coded locations in the code. I want him to be able to drag the color map to the right location.
I studied the THREE JS documentation and examples but I haven't found anything yet.

Zoom on graph jumps to random point with d3js

I am learning d3js and trying to incorporate zooming/panning features on a graph, however on the initial zoom event it jumps to a random spot and zooms in. After that, the zooming and panning work as expected. Why is the initial event moving the starting point and adjusting the scale oddly?
Code and example here: bl.ocks.org/dbaileychess/7570631
This is because the zoom behaviour is attached to a different element than the one you're zooming. It determines the position of the mouse cursor relative to its own position and passes that information to the callback. If you're zooming a different element, the relative coordinates are no longer correct.
To fix, add the offset between the elements that the zoom behaviour is attached to and the elements you're zooming to the translation. This question has come up a number of times already, see e.g. here.

rotate a projection to follow mouse drag

I'm working on a project to generate world map projections and manipulate them. You can see a beta version here : http://ansichtssache-n.ch/en/personas/daVinci
I'm trying to get the drag event correctly interpreted, so that for example when you drag Australia up, it actually moves Australia up and not the center of the projection (causing Australia to move down in a Miller projection).
I've been trying to find the correct rotation angles to apply to the 3 axis as shown here http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4282586 .
I can get the x/y position on the canvas from the start and end of the mouse drag, I can get the geo-coordinates of these points too, and I can get the x/y of the current center as well as its geo-coordinates, but honestly I'm stuck now...
Any idea ?
I had a similar problem here Compose two rotations in D3 geo projection?
I came up with a way to compose the trackball rotation with the existing projection rotation so that you get intuitive control regardless of the original globe orientation.

How to custom the map controller in Windows Phone to use my Map image

I am developing a Map App for our school. Our school provide me its own map image and coordinate information. So I want use my map image as the source of map and accord to user's location to show a point in the map image. Can anybody gives me some advice?
Thanks in advance.
There are 2 ways:
It is possible to change the source of the map-tiles (e.g. from Bing to say Nokia or Google) of the Map Control. However, for this to work, it is important that map-tiles source implements mechanisms like quadkeys (e.g. see this). Therefore, to answer your question if you would like to use the Bing Map Control with your school's map so that you can leverage the positioning features of the control, it would require that you have a map-tile server properly designed in order to achieve this. AND, there might be some legal issue with altering the Bing Map control if i am not mistaken.
However, given that you are suggesting an image of the map and then doing positioning, then i would suggest that it can be as easy as you calibrating the pixel X-Y coordinate system on the map with that of the geo-coordinate provided by the geo-watcher. Then, in your code you could do a simple mapping between these 2 systems and then draw something on top of the image. For this part you could use a writeablebitmap or simply use the fact that you can overlay UI controls with silverlight. So, for the latter have a canvas with the an image of the map of your school and then on top of that canvas you can have an <image> representing the device and change its top-left coordinate wrt to the canvas.
So, in summary, as the geo-watcher gives geo x-y coordinates to your code, there is mapping function to the pixel X-Y (which you have pre-calculated) and use that XY to position an overlay <image> or draw some "pin" on a writeablebitmap where you have previously draw the image of the map of your school. Things get complicated with this approach when you want to have zooming as well but, this solution is easily scalable.
Does this help clear things a bit?
Answering 2nd question in comment below:
Yes you can zoom in and out of the canvas but, you would have to program it yourself. The control itself, the canvas does not have this capability. Hence, you would have to recognize the triggers for a zoom action (e.g. clicking on the (+) or (-) buttons or, pinch and stretch gestures) and react to that by re-drawing on the canvas a portion of the region on the canvas so that now that regions stretches over the entire canvas. That is, zooming. For instance for the zoom in case: you would have to determine a geometrical area which corresponds to the zoom factor and is in ratio to the dimensions of the canvas object. Then, you would have to scale that portion up so that edges and empty spaces representing walls and spaces between them grow proportionately. Also, you have to determine the center point of that region which your fix on the canvas so that everything grows away from it. Hence, you would be achieving a appropriate zooming effect. At this point you would have to re-adjust your mapping function of geo-coordinates to pixel XY so that the "pin" or object of interest can be drawn with precision and accurately on the newly rendered surface.
I understand that this can appear quite intensive but, it is straightforward once you appreciate for yourself the mechanics of what is required.
Another easier option could be to use SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) in a Web-Browser control. Note that you would still require the geo-coordinate to pixel-xy system. However, with this approach you can get the zooming for free with the combination of SVG (which have transformation capabilities for the scale up and down operations) and Web-Browser which enables you to render the SVG and does the gesture handling of zooming in to the map. For that, i believe that the cost of work would be in re-creating the map of your school which is in bitmap to SVG. There are tools like Inkscape which you can use to load the image of your map and then trace the outlines over it. You can then save that outline document as an SVG. In fact, i would recommend this approach to your problem before tackling the Canvas method as i feel that it would be the easiest path for your needs.

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