Geographic Information Systems: An Introduction, 3rd Edition

8.6 Multimedia

Multimedia has a user interface comprising text, sound, and image and is making inroads in the GIS world (Figure 8.19). Multimedia program systems and equipment comprise:

• Processing, storage, and exchange of data
• Processing of all types of data: numbers, text, graphics, images, animation, sound, and video
• Integration of all kinds of data
• Interactive use of data under machine control

In GIS, multimedia includes such elements as hypermaps, cartographic visualization and animation, digital images and satellite data, sound, hypertext, virtual reality, and hypermedia spatial databases. Multimedia techniques enable the establishment of information from images, maps, and so on, by direct manipulation. The use of animation techniques allows multimedia to show spatial changes over time. The most extreme virtual reality experience is obtained through turning on a computer and submerging oneself in its reality. Equipped with two screens for eyes, three-dimensional sound, and data gloves, one can be transported into a world where almost all exterior sensations are artificial.

Figure 8.19

Multimedia comprise software and hardware that include integrated data in the form of sound, images, numbers, text, and video that can be treated interactively.

Sound, image, and video are long streams of binary data that can be of random length. In relation to databases, therefore, we can talk ...