Touring in a geographic information system

A geographic information system for touring geographic information in a three-dimensional geographic information system, comprising:

• a tour controller that:
• (i) receives a set of actions for a tour, each action including a tour time, wherein a tour time of at least one of the actions is defined by a user the set of actions including a fly-to action that includes position and orientation values defined by the user
• (ii) executes each action in the set of actions to tour geographic information in the geographic information system, wherein the tour controller moves, at a time specified by a tour time associated with the fly-to action, a virtual camera through a three-dimensional environment of the geographic information system according to the position and orientation values included in the fly-to action,
• (iii) interpolates a spline based on two or more locations, each location associated with a different action in the set of actions, and
• (iv) moves the virtual camera along the spine;
• and
• a tour interpreter that parses a Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file,
• wherein a first speed of the virtual camera moving through the three-dimensional environment is based on a first tour time associated with a first action, a second speed of the virtual camera moving through the three-dimensional environment is based on a second tour time associated with a second action different from the first action, and the first speed is defined independently of the second speed,
• wherein the virtual camera at least in part specifies which geographic information in the geographic information system to display, an action specifies an instruction to be executed to tour geographic information in the geographic information system, and a duration value of an action defines how much tour time elapses to complete the action.

An apparatus comprising at least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoding instructions thereon that, in response to execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

• (a) receiving a set of actions for a tour, each action including a tour time, wherein a tour time of at least one of the actions is defined by a user, the set of actions including a fly-to action that includes position and orientation values defined by the user, wherein an action specifies an instruction to be executed to tour geographic information in the geographic information system and a duration value of an action defines how much tour time elapses to complete the action and wherein the receiving comprises parsing a Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file;
• (b) executing each action in the set of actions to tour geographic information in the geographic information system, the executing comprising moving, at a time specified by a tour time associated with the fly-to action, a virtual camera though a three-dimensional environment of the geographic information system according to the position and orientation values included in the fly-to action,
• wherein a first speed of the virtual camera moving through the three-dimensional environment is based on a first tour time associated with a first action, a second speed of the “virtual camera moving through the three-dimensional environment is based on a second tour time associated with a second action different from the first action, and the first speed is defined independently of the second speed, and
• wherein the virtual camera at least in part specifies which geographic information in the geographic information system to display;
• and
• (c) interpolating a spline based on two or more locations, each location associated with a different action in the set of actions,
• wherein the executing (b) further comprises moving the virtual camera along the spline.