Develop a 3D earth iPhone app to choose a country. For iphone/ipad.
This is NOT a clone of Google Earth. It will have limited zoom — just enough zoom to see countries clearly.
Your app will be standalone, but we later integrate it into another project we are working on.
FUNCTIONALTY:
~ Pinch zooming and navigation of the globe with standard iPhone gestures.
~ Smooth rotation between two sets of GPS points.
~ High-resolution texture maps of the globe – at maximum zoom, Europe fills the screen.
~ Overlay for the texture maps that shows country borders.
~ Float country names over the globe with pins. (We will provide lat/lon for all countries). If country pins are overlapping, only display a few.
~ Tapping a pin opens a small information display.
~ Code should be well structured so that it is easy for a developer to quickly add the code into app projects.
~ Ray casting to allow for a double tap on the screen to log the GPS coordinates associated with the double tap.
~ Smooth edges of outer edge of earth (no angles or aliasing).
~ Display thin asmosphere effect on edge of earth.
~ Alternative popup menu display chooses countries by name.
~ Use arcball rotation, so the globe follows the user’s drag: http://rainwarrior.thenoos.net/dragon/arcball.html
~ Momentum spin, if user flicks the globe.
~ Use GPS to center on current location on globe
The code will be similar to this, with more features:
http://www.clevercoding.com/iPhone3Dglobe.php
IMAGERY:
The imagery will be based on the NASA blue marble.
Using maps from March and September: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_set.php?categoryID=2355
User can toggle between the two maps.
The globe will be overlaid with a sector to illustrate night, like this:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Earth/action?opt=-p
with this source:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html
Atmosphere effect is very thin (a few pixels), like this:
http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/boise/rmrs_sai/sai_subjects/images/atmosphere-nasa.gov.jpg
The result will be similar to this: http://civicmaps.org/spinnyglobe/flash/bin/spinnyglobe.html
I look forward to your bid.
Thank you,
Michael
