Wednesday, January 15th, 2014 at 9:10 pm by ba3 — Category: Demo News
This year we were fortunate enough to spend a couple days at CES 2014 in Las Vegas. The show of shows did not disappoint. Having just released the Windows 8 SDK of the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine, we made our way to the monster-sized Panasonic area to see it in action.
The experience: An application titled “Panasonic Weather Solutions” was on demonstration, a beautiful execution in functionality and design using Altus as the underlying map rendering engine technology. The touch response was razor sharp and lightning fast, while markers and labels transitioned seamlessly with panning and zooming, and information layers toggled perfectly. The globe was dark, and indigo, violet, and white lines played on a glossy oil night like surface. The experience popped crisply off the pixels of the slick 20″ Panasonic 4K Toughpad Tablet.
The application: The Panasonic Weather Solutions application exponentially improves on a 70 year old weather forecasting process by gathering data from special devices mounted on the fuselages of airplanes while in flight. Where weather balloon positioning is inaccurate, an airplane’s position is very accurate and constantly tracked. This allows for more data, and for it to be accessed in real-time. This equals better forecasting. Relative humidity, wind, temperature, and ice detection are transmitted to the ground center for modeling, analysis, and visualization.
Seen to the right of the tablet is the special hardware mounted to the exterior of an airplane’s fuselage.
It was exciting to see such a well executed Windows 8 application in action. Panasonic has undoubtedly delivered a very impressive application on the Windows 8 platform using the BA3 Altus Mapping Engine, and we look forward to see what others can do with our newest SDK.
To download the Windows 8 SDK go here.