Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7
Intersection
6 2D Map Augmentation
The main focus of this section of the chapter is to present the 2D map augmen-
tation modality. In this section will provide more details of how 2D map view
visualisation is implemented.
6.1 Mobile Application
Figure
8
a shows the entry screen to the Virtual Stickies application. Figure
8
b
presents the map view with the menu showing. This menu permits three actions,
to submit a new object, to retrieve other objects and to change the map view mode
as shown in Fig.
9
. The latter menu option allows the user to switch between an
actual street map mode, that is equivalent to a real paper map and the satellite map
view, which shows an image from space.
6.2 Map Overlay
Map overlays are used to display extra information as a layer on top of the map
view. To achieve the best result whilst working on the Android platform we have
used the Google Maps library to aid in the implementation. We have used Google
provided services to display and manage maps. We have to provide implemen-
tation and management support for the map overlays ourselves.
At this stage the prototype allows the user to tap on a red bubble on screen and
it will automatically load the message saved with that object. Other possible
visualisation techniques can be used to annotate the map view. However, 2D
visualisation based on a map provides quite a limited engagement of the user with
the surrounding environment. In a way a user of a map view is constantly shifting
focus from the map into the real physical reality around and back, which is
somewhat cumbersome.
