FOSS4G 2022 general tracks

In the current web GIS ecosystem, 3D is nothing new. It is currently fairly simple to create a 3D web application for rendering geospatial data using open source software, the same can be said for 2D GIS. But in some use cases, you do not wish to have to decide between one or the other. Enter @vcmap/core, a new OS project developed by virtualcitySYSTEMS GmbH of Berlin. With a number of high level abstractions, this slim open source library allows you to create web applications which are able to represent the same data in 2D, 3D and even oblique imagery.

By abstracting layers, maps, interactions and styling, your data becomes renderer agnostic. Additionally, a parameterized approach to 3D allows you to easily create cuboid 3D representations from simple 2D representations. A feature which has proven useful in urban planning scenarios.

Furthermore, the @vcmap/core comes with a powerful serialization mechanism. All runtime objects can be serialized and stored using JSON. This way, you can easily develop a web gis framework which allows a quick deployment of multiple applications which only differ in data.

And this is not all, the @vcmap/core is still not finished, with geometry editors on the roadmap and a further open source project, the @vcmap/ui to follow this year. The @vcmap/ui is an accompanying UI which integrates smoothly with the @vcmap/core and provides a powerful plugin API. This plugin API allows for fast development of custom tools with which to enhance, analyze and use your geospatial data without the need to fully implement an entire web GIS.