Just a heads-up, I have decided to shut down lidar.boydsmaps.com.
Well, at boydsmaps.com, it ain't over until it's over. The LIDAR site is returning (in a sense)....
I liked playing with the lighting to bring out details on this old site, but it only covered a small area and required lots of work to make the maps. The other day I had a flash of inspiration that it would be possible to take this old code and "re-wire" it to use the same mapbox-format 3d data from the main site. So, I dove in and have the basics up and running on my development server now. Lots more to do, but I hope to put it online before the end of this month.
Coverage will be the same as the Mid-Atlantic LIDAR 3d map (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island with partial coverage of Virginia, West Virginia, New York and Massachussets). There will be a new button in the boydsmaps app toolbar (desktop version only) that opens the 3d LIDAR viewer with your current location in the middle of a 2.5km x 2.5km "slice" of the terrain. You can then play with the "sun" x-y-z coordinates and brightness to bring out different details in both 2d and 3d view.
Here's a little 45-second video of the unfinished app to tease you.
We start in a familiar location in the boydsmaps app, then switch to the LIDAR viewer and play a bit with the lighting. But the fun part comes towards the end -
live, interactive vertical exaggeration control - stretch and squeeze the terrain all you want. Unlike the regular boydsmaps app, it works in both 2d and 3d view.
I also hope to add 3d aerials of the whole Mid-Atlantic region and a shader that generates a custom color scheme based solely on the elevation range in the 2.5km slice of terrain. This will take a little time, but it's coming!
Coming soon to boydsmaps.com!
vimeo.com
