Patent ID: 9710882
Date: 2017-07-18
CPC Classifications: G01C,G06T,G09B,G09G,H04W

Claim:
1. A method of rapidly loading animated raster data, comprising: initiating, in a computing environment comprised of hardware and software components that include at least one processor configured to display animated maps that interactively permit pan and zoom functions on a user interface, an overlay developed from a raster image representative of data that changes over a specific period of time, in response to a user request to view time-series data at a selected zoom level from a client application, wherein the overlay displays representations of observed, extrapolated, and forecasted meteorological data; determining a size difference between a native resolution and a coarser resolution for the overlay, so that particular resolutions of the overlay at selected zoom levels are selectively loaded for display based on 1) a granularity of the selected zoom level, and 2) both a pixel size and an image size of the raster image; constructing a tile for presentation of the coarser resolution of the overlay on an animated map by slicing and downsampling a portion of the raster image representative of data from a total image file, the tile representing a coarser version of the raster image representative of data than the selected zoom level from the user request; computing a larger version of each tile at the client application to stretch the raster image so that the coarser version of the raster image appears as a larger zoom level than the selected zoom level; and performing additional computations on the larger version of each tile to manipulate previously-loaded tiles by rounding a plurality of data points on the larger version of each tile so that when the user requests different zoom levels, a resolution of the previously-loaded tiles appears equal to a resolution of the current zoom level on the animated map so that the previously-loaded tiles are either stretched or squished depending on the selected zoom level, until the user selects a zoom level that is substantially different from the tiles of raster images available at the client application.