Pathways focuses on interaction with real-time data, databases and simulations through maps. The Pathways user can examine database contents, real-time data sources, or simulated objects, by pointing and clicking at their representation on a map.
A typical agent of those that we have developed and coded is that used to build terrain databases (elevation, ground cover, and features) from raw source data. For user-specified corner points, the agent searches the available databases and performs the following actions.
- Finds applicable databases and orders them based on resolution, content, and geography.
- Determines raw format and calls appropriate input routines.
- Converts raw data to the target coordinate system if necessary.
- Generalizes data when reducing resolution, interpolates when increasing resolution.
- Builds a mosaic at the target resolution .
Typical raw database sizes range in size from a few hundred megabytes to 5 gigabytes.
Suppose that the user is interested in buildings in the Washington DC area and has collected pictures, text, and other information about them. Upon starting the system he is presented with a previously created area specific to his problem as shown.
 Zooming in to reasonably high resolution, the user finds 3 icons representing items in the database (a post office and two buildings). Clicking on the middle icon reveals a Glebe Road office building - HTML text appearing in the top right window, and a picture below it. The icon also launches a voice description of the object and a web browser of, in this case, the artis home page. The information has also been stored as a URL in the proper location and associated with the proper metadata within the Intraneer groupware system. The information comprising this object were collected using a user-friendly object editor. One may note that the viewer is programmed in "pure" Java 1.1.6.
To view the area in 3 dimensions takes a single button click - the result appears in a VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) browser in another window. The user flies over the area to see the building's location in a broader context.
Many more interactions are possible. The user controls the display of city names and other geographic features at several resolution levels. Access to data about any city or geographic feature in the United States takes only fractions of a second on even modestly powered laptop computers.
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