Segmented editor for tours of a geographic information system, and applications thereof

A system for efficiently editing a tour, comprising:

• a tour editor module that defines a user-defined tour through a three-dimensional environment on a geographic information system, the user-defined tour comprising a series of segments and alters an order of the series of segments, each segment of the series specifying:
• (i) a duration of the segment in the user-defined tour,
• (ii) a position of a virtual camera in the three-dimensional environment during playback of the segment of the user-defined tour, the virtual camera specifying a viewpoint to display the three-dimensional model of geographic information in the three-dimensional environment, and
• (iii) an asset to be displayed at a specified position in the three-dimensional environment during playback of the segment of the user-defined tour;
• a tour interpreter module that receives a request to play the user-defined tour and, in response to the request to play the user-defined tour, for each segment of the user-defined tour in an order specified by the series of segments, changes a position in the three-dimensional environment of the virtual camera to the position specified by the segment to display the three-dimensional environment from the viewpoint of the virtual camera;
• and
• a renderer module that, for each segment of the user-defined tour in an order specified by the series of segments, renders the asset in the three-dimensional environment in response to the input to play the user-defined tour
• wherein the series of segments tour editor module, tour interpreter module, renderer module are, each implemented on at least one computing device.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform a method for efficiently editing a tour, the method comprising:

• (a) receiving, by one or more computing devices, a user-defined tour, the user-defined tour comprising a series of segments, each segment specifying:
• (i) a duration of the segment in the user-defined tour,
• (ii) a position of a virtual camera in a three-dimensional environment on a geographic information system during playback of the segment of the user-defined tour, the three-dimensional environment including a three-dimensional model of geographic information and the virtual camera specifying a viewpoint to display the three-dimensional model of geographic information in the three-dimensional environment, and
• (iii) an asset to be displayed at a specified position in the three-dimensional environment during playback of the segment of the user-defined tour;
• (b) receiving, by the one or more computing devices, alteration to an order of the series of segments;
• (c) receiving, by the one or more computing devices, a request to play the user defined tour;
• in response to receiving the request to play the user-defined tour, for each segment of the user-defined tour in an order based at least in part on the received alteration of the order of the series of segments:
• (d) moving, by the one or more computing devices, the virtual camera through the three-dimensional environment to the position specified by the segment to display the three-dimensional environment from the viewpoint of the virtual camera;
• and
• (e) displaying, by the one or more computing devices, the asset in the three-dimensional environment.