CV-16 - Virtual and immersive environments

- Discuss the nature and use of virtual environments, such as Google Earth
- Explain how various data formats and software and hardware environments support immersive visualization
- Compare and contrast the relative advantages of different immersive display systems used for cartographic visualization (e.g., CAVEs, GeoWalls)
- Evaluate the extent to which a GeoWall or CAVE does or does not enhance understanding of spatial data
- Explain how the virtual and immersive environments become increasingly more complex as we move from the relatively non-immersive VRML desktop environment to a stereoscopic display (e.g., a GeoWall) to a more fully immersive CAVE
CV-03 - Vector Formats and Sources
In the last ten years, the rise of efficient computing devices with significant processing power and storage has caused a surge in digital data collection and publication. As more software programs and hardware devices are released, we are not only seeing an increase in available data, but also an increase in available data formats. Cartographers today have access to a wide range of interesting datasets, and online portals for downloading geospatial data now frequently offer that data in several different formats. This chapter provides information useful to modern cartographers working with vector data, including an overview of common vector data formats (e.g. shapefile, GeoJSON, file geodatabase); their relative benefits, idiosyncrasies, and limitations; and a list of popular sources for geospatial vector data (e.g. United States Census Bureau, university data warehouses).