Tours

Each kml file can contain multiple <Tour> elements. As a sub-type of the abstract <Feature> type, either <Document> or <Folder> elements can contain one or more <Tour> elements. As such, the kml_document and kml_parent format attributes can be used to determine the location of each <Tour> element in the overall hierarchy.

Tour Primitives

Tour primitives (<AnimatedUpdate>,<FlyTo>,<SoundCue>,<TourControl>, and <Wait>) are routed to specific tours via the kml_document, and kml_tour format attributes.

This is very similar to the relationship between Folders and their children.

Update Items

Update items are features that are part of the <Update> element of a specific <AnimatedUpdate>.

A feature is designated as an update item via the kml_update_mode format attribute. To route an update item to a specific <AnimatedUpdate>, the kml_tour, and kml_animated_update attributes must be present and contain the ID’s of the corresponding <Tour> and <AnimatedUpdate> elements. The kml_document format attribute can also be specified.

Tour Generation

The KML writer supports automatically generating KML Tours from input Placemark features.

Tour generation is controlled via kml_tour_stop_* format attributes that are specific to Placemark features. The tour consists of tour stops that correspond to each feature. The location of the tour stop corresponds to the center point of the input feature.

In the case of features with line geometry, a series of tour stops will be generated, where each vertex in the line becomes a tour stop. If the line contains the following measures, they will be used to generate the tilt, heading and range of the tour stops along the line geometry:

• kml_tour_stop_view_heading
• kml_tour_stop_view_tilt
• kml_tour_stop_view_range