Esri is pleased to announce the beta release of ArcGIS Pro, which is a new ArcGIS for Desktop application that provides many exciting features. ArcGIS Pro is designed for GIS professionals who need to visualize, edit, and perform analysis—in both 2D and 3D. All current ArcGIS for Desktop customers are invited to download ArcGIS Pro and participate in its beta program.

Your work in ArcGIS Pro is organized into projects, which bring together all the resources you need to complete your GIS tasks. You can store as many maps and layouts as you need in the same project, and you can open multiple maps at once and view them side by side. You can package your projects to collaborate with others, or share your work as web maps and web layers. ArcGIS Pro can use local data, as well as content from your ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS organization.

ArcGIS Pro is a 64-bit, multi-threaded application with a modern user experience that runs on the Windows platform. The ribbon interface of ArcGIS Pro makes it easy to find the commands you need. Get started with ArcGIS Pro by working through the help system tutorials, or just jump in by creating a new project and adding data to it. You can also import your existing ArcGIS for Desktop documents into your project.

To download ArcGIS Pro, visit pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app, and sign in with your ArcGIS Online organizational account. Remember that all ArcGIS for Desktop customers on maintenance are entitled to an ArcGIS Online Organization Plan, so it’s time to register for it if you haven’t yet done so. You can install ArcGIS Pro alongside any release of ArcGIS for Desktop.

From the ArcGIS Pro home page, you can also access the product help system, view introductory videos, and engage with the forums. We want to know what you think of ArcGIS Pro. You can contact Esri Technical Support or your local distributor, if outside the United States, as well as post your feedback to the ArcGIS Pro user forums. Be sure to follow this blog and the @ArcGISPro Twitter account for announcement updates.

The Esri Development Team invites you to participate in a moderated and recorded Usability Study of 3 specific areas of ArcGIS Pro: GIS Content Management, Raster, and Map Authoring.

Who we’re looking for:

• Existing ArcGIS for Desktop users
• ArcGIS Online and App users interested in professional GIS software
• Users of Esri Solutions (Local Government, Water Utilities, Land Records, Defense, Forestry, Hydrology)
• Users with varying degrees of experience who manage GIS content, work with raster data, and author maps

In total, we’re looking for 30 committed testers.

How it works:

Our goal for this study is to assess the usability of the map authoring, the raster, and the content management areas of ArcGIS Pro; we want you to test our software, we’re not testing your ArcGIS skills.

To consider you as a usability tester, we require that you are registered and approved by your employer to attend the 2014 Esri User Conference and complete a pre-screening questionnaire—details below. Your time in the test lab is about 40 minutes.

Your test session will be recorded and observed by one or more members of the Development Team.

Click here to sign up

We thank you in advance for your time and look forward to meeting you in San Diego.

See important updates to the blog post Esri and the Science Community, including new information on the many projects and initiatives in place to support science and scientists. In the post, science community refers to researchers and practitioners within universities, research institutes, government agencies, NGOs, and more, and thus points the reader to several of the ArcGIS Resource Center Communities, as well as to the ArcGIS for Professionals site and the new ArcGIS Pro App.

See the post at esriurl.com/scicomm. A list at the bottom informs as to the many ways for users to keep abreast of science developments at Esri. Please contact Chief Scientist Dawn Wright for more information.

ArcGIS Pro provides an integrated platform for 2D and 3D visualization and analysis. Pro has undergone extensive performance and scalability testing, especially in virtualized environments. Especially using the NVIDIA K1 and K2 graphics cards designed for virtualized environments.  To share this information with our users, we will be publishing a series of blogs on the use of ArcGIS Pro in Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, Microsoft Hyper-V VDI and VMWare Horizon View.

The Pro hardware requirements are being finalized. For a physical machine Pro does not require a GPU, but it is preferred. What about a virtual environment? Can a virtual environment provide access to a GPU?  For a virtual environment the machine hosting the hypervisor can be configured with graphics cards specifically designed for virtualization, with the GPUs shared between multiple VMs. You may ask what type of user experience is possible in virtual environment and how many VMs can a single shared GPU accommodate? This and following blogs will provide information and answers to help you plan your Pro deployment in a virtualized environment.

These tests explore the use of virtualized GPUs in virtualized environments, and also share metrics that show when and how NVIDIA K1 and K2 graphics cards benefit the performance of ArcGIS Pro. The K1 and K2 cards are specifically designed for use in virtualized environments. Additional information on the NVIDIA K1 and K2 cards can be found at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/grid-boards.html

XenServer 6.2 and XenDesktop7.1

The first discussion is of using Pro in a virtualized environment using NVIDIA K1 cards, with Citrix XenServer 6.2 and XenDesktop 7.1. The K1 card was chosen for the first set of tests since it can support a higher number of concurrent VMs. Tests using the K2 card will be discussed in future blogs. The K1 card has 4 Kepler GPUs, each equivalent to a Quadro K600 card. Each physical GPU can host several types of virtual GPU (vGPU). An excellent source of information on this configuration and a description of the different vGPU types is at: http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/go/reviewers-guide-remote-3d-graphics-apps-part-3-xenserver-vgpu.pdf

For the K1 card there are 3 vGPU types (K100, K140Q, and Pass-Through). Using Citrix XenCenter the hypervisor was configured to use the GPUs as the K140Q type.  This virtual GPU type provides 1GB of video RAM to each vGPU. The K140Q configuration is the mid-tier configuration.

The K100 vGPU type is the lower capability configuration, suitable for business graphics, and can host up to 8 VMs per physical GPU (high-density). This vGPU type was tested and was found to provide a marginal user experience for 2D, but not adequate for 3D.

The Pass-through vGPU type is the highest capability configuration where a single VM is paired with a single GPU. When this was tested the 2D and 3D user experience was fantastic, with greater than 40 frames-per-second (FPS) reached for a majority of the test. This vGPU type have very low density, one VM to 1 GPU. This vGPU type will be probably be used when Pro is used for heavy-duty image analysis, 3D anaylsis, or when other high-end graphics applications require a dedicated GPU.

The K140Q vGPU type is the mid-tier configuration. This vGPU type provides an adequate user experience while Pro is using 3D, and a reasonable density at 4 VMs per GPU.  The FPS were 13-17 which allowed for a relatively smooth user experience.

The next blog will dive into greater detail on the K140Q vGPU testing.

The Performance Engineering  team has been doing a lot of testing on Pro in virtualized environments. This includes performance and scalability in Microsoft Hyper-V VDI and Citrix XenDesktop . Members of the team will be at the User Conference and look forward to talking about using ArcGIS Desktop and Server, especially Pro in virtualized environments. There will be a Tech Session and a SIG specifically on virtualization.

There will be a Virtualization Special Interest Group (SIG) on Wednesday 12:00pm-1:00pm Room 29A. This meeting will be interactive. We would like to learn which virtualization environments you work in, the requirements needed to host Pro and other ArcGIS products in you environment, performance issues related to virtualized environments, and other challenges. This will help us target our testing and certification efforts, deliver meaningful information to you and deliver better products. Also at this SIG will be a couple of individuals we have worked closely with from NVIDIA and Microsoft. They will be able to answer technical and road ahead questions.

There will be an ArcGIS in Virtualized Environments tech session on Thursday 3:15pm – 4:30pm Room 17A. We will discuss our testing results, configurations, tests, and other related topics during that session. This will include alot of information on test results of ArcMap and Pro in Citrix XenDesktop and Hyper-V VDI using the NVIDIA K1 card which is specially designed for virtualized environments.

ArcGIS Pro with NVIDIA K1 in XenDesktop

This article continues the discussion on using ArcGIS Pro in virtualized environments, focusing on how a shareable GPU enhances the ArcGIS Pro user experience and the configurations used to deliver that user experience.

Our test environment uses the NVIDIA K1 card which is designed to be used in Microsoft Hyper-V VDI, Citrix XenDesktop, and VMWare virtualized environments. It contains four GK107GL GPUs. Each of those is an entry-level GPU comparable to an NVIDIA K600.

In Citrix XenServer, the K1 GPUs can be configured as a K100, K120Q, K140Q, or Pass-Through. This is how to configure the virtual GPU (vGPU) capabilities and VM density per GPU for specific environments and applications. The following chart has more information on the XenServer vGPU configurations.

First we will look at the K100 configuration. It is targeted at office applications and knowledge worker use cases (PowerPoint, Outlook). The K100′s primary advantage is being able to host eight vGPUs (that’s eight VMs) per physical GPU. This is the VM-per-GPU density. But with a frame buffer of 256 MB per vGPU, the type of applications that can be used within the VM has to be kept to that of a typical knowledge worker.

The K140Q configuration can host four vGPUs per physical GPU, so the VM-per-GPU density is less. But with a frame buffer of 1024 MB and fewer VMs sharing the GPU, it can accommodate applications with greater rendering needs.

In order to assess the performance of the different vGPU configurations, the Performance Engineering team conducted a series of performance tests for ArcGIS Pro.  Test results  for the standardized ArcGIS Pro rendering test suite revealed that for the K100 the test execution time, frames per second (FPS), and other metrics were not as good as they were for the K140Q. That was expected.

Additional user acceptance testing was conducted in a holistic lab environment where  five users (real humans) used ArcGIS Pro with 3D data in the VMs using the K100 and K140Q configurations. The first phase of testing had users on VM’s which had a  K100 configuration. With the K100 configuration a maximum of 8 VMs share one GPU. Since we had 5 users using VMs they were placed on one GPU—less than its maximum density (8).  After this first phase of testing was complete, users then tested on VM’s which had the K140Q configuration.  The K140Q puts four VMs on one GPU, reaching its maximum density, and one VM had a GPU all to itself. The feedback showed that the K100 had difficulty providing an adequate user experience. The K140Q provided smoother rendering and animation. The chart below shows a comparison of the FPS seen in ArcGIS Pro for each VM. The K140Q columns (in green) clearly show higher FPS than the K100 (in light green) during the test.

Frames Per Second for K140Q and K100

The K100 VMs averaged 13 FPS during the test, while the K140Q VMs averaged 23 FPS. Because of this and other reasons, we use the K140Q configuration for our XenServer/XenDesktop performance and scalability testing.

We will begin testing the NVIDIA K2 card this week and also plan comprehensive XenApp testing with the NVIDA K1 and K2 cards.

The beta 5 release of ArcGIS Pro is now available. You can download it from the ArcGIS Pro website or check for updates within ArcGIS Pro. This release has some important changes to the way you authorize your software license.

ArcGIS Pro follows a named user licensing model, where each user account is assigned permissions to access the software. Starting with beta 5, licenses for ArcGIS Pro are administered through your ArcGIS Online organizational account. This will be the software authorization method used for the remainder of the beta program, as well as in the final release.

If you’ve been using ArcGIS Pro beta, you’re already used to signing in to start the application. The difference now is that the organization administrator needs to assign each account a software license level and, optionally, any additional extensions. When you start ArcGIS Pro and sign in, the application runs with the level and extensions your administrator has specified.

If you’re not part of the beta program yet, remember that all current ArcGIS for Desktop customers are invited to join and download ArcGIS Pro. You can sign up on the ArcGIS Pro website.

Here’s what you need to do to use ArcGIS Pro.

If you are the administrator of an ArcGIS Online organization that is currently part of the ArcGIS Pro beta program, you need to use the ArcGIS Online website to specify which members can run ArcGIS Pro and the software licenses available to them. You can manage licenses for individual members or make bulk assignment updates. Licensing through Portal for ArcGIS will be available in a future beta release.

1. Sign in at www.arcgis.com. You must have an administrator role.
2. On the My Organization page, click the Manage Licenses button.

3. Assign licenses to members of your organization. You see graphs of the numbers of licenses available. The products and numbers of licenses you see in ArcGIS Online correspond to those to which your organization is entitled or has purchased.

4. Review the help for more information.

You can contact Esri Customer Service (or send an email to service@esri.com) if you are part of the beta program but don’t see the Manage Licenses button.

If you are not an administrator in your organization, check with your administrator and make sure your license has been assigned. You should only update to beta 5 after you have confirmed that your account has a license. If your administrator has not set your license, ArcGIS Pro beta 5 will not run when you attempt to sign in.

After you start ArcGIS Pro, you can review your current licenses (requires signing in to view this link) by clicking the Project tab and clicking Licensing. If you need to work with ArcGIS Pro in a disconnected mode or if you run Python scripts outside of the ArcGIS Pro application, you can check out a license from this tab.

ArcGIS Pro can be installed on the same machine as other ArcGIS for Desktop releases, or on a machine without any Esri products. Keep in mind that only ArcGIS Pro uses licensing through the organization. The other ArcGIS for Desktop applications—ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcGlobe, and ArcScene—continue to use the local ArcGIS Administrator application to set levels and extensions.

You can post your feedback about ArcGIS Pro on the Esri beta forums (sign in on the ArcGIS Pro website and click the Forums button) or contact Esri Technical Support.

ArcGIS Pro now has a brand new experience for getting comprehensive documentation within the app. By default, Pro opens your default browser to pro.arcgis.com giving you access to the most up-to-date collection of ArcGIS Pro help documentation while keeping your download and install size small. When getting context help, such as clicking the ? within the pane of a geoprocessing tool, you will be taken to a topic on the web that provides you with information specific to your work.

If you know you will be working in a disconnected environment, you should install ArcGIS Pro Offline Help, which uses a help viewer application. In the viewer app, you can navigate every topic in the system, bookmark important topics, as well as create and save your own notes.

ArcGIS Pro Offline Help can be downloaded, along with the ArcGIS Pro application, from My Esri. After you have installed the local help, you can switch between web and local help at any time by clicking on the Project tab > Options > Application > General.

An update to Esri’s LAS Optimizer is now available. LAS Optimizer 1.2 enhancements include:

- Support for LAS 1.4, all point record formats.
- Output zLAS files are backward compatible when LAS 1.3 or earlier payload is used.
- Retain original time stamp upon decompression if LAS file not altered in any way.
- Command line switch to verify integrity of zLAS files.
- Option to stop process when encountering error with a file.
- Drag and drop files/folders into application dialog from Windows Explorer.
- Does not overwrite log file.

The new version can be found here: http://bit.ly/19bCrMq

By Kenneth “there’s a u in colour” Field, Senior Cartographic Product Engineer

ArcGIS Pro offers a rich new experience for making maps. Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing many of the new and exciting features that will help you better design and share beautiful maps. Today we’ll look at how we’ve rebuilt the color palettes to provide better default options and an improved selection of color choices.

When we were designing the new ArcGIS Pro app we looked at all of the color ramps in ArcMap as well as many from a range of sources to inspire us to give our users a better experience. There’s a lot! In fact, here’s an inside snap of part of the selection process early on in the planning of our new color schemes – yes, we printed them out!

We wanted to build a fresh set of color schemes that better supported cartography and supported better cartography and we wanted to ensure we gave our users the very best possible choices that we know work well when designing great maps. Rather than try and reinvent the color wheel (pun intended!) or just regurgitate the colors in ArcMap we worked with our friend and colleague Cynthia Brewer to implement her ColorBrewer color schemes as part of ArcGIS Pro.

Developed as part of an academic project in 2002, Cindy and her co-worker Mark Harrower developed the ColorBrewer tool which has become the de facto choice for many cartographers when selecting colors. The schemes she researched and provided specifications for have been available for the last decade and are currently available via the ColorBrewer 2.0 web site which many people have used to set up their own color schemes in ArcMap. In fact, the research paper Mark and Cindy wrote in 2003 (published in The Cartographic Journal) went on to win a prestigious award for the best published paper in the journal that year and a downloadable style file of colors has been available for ArcMap for a number of years.

With such high quality research already done, it made sense to incorporate it into ArcGIS Pro rather than users having to go outside the software to find colors they wanted to work with. With Cindy’s agreement, we baked the ColorBrewer specifications into ArcGIS Pro to give map-makers access to these great color schemes as a default. Now, picking great color schemes has never been so easy. Of course, the ColorBrewer schemes which support colorblind safe palettes are also included.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Any software has to have defaults. When you add data to a software package there has to be some default way of displaying it. In ArcMap, when you add a layer and then go to create a choropleth (Graduated Color) map for instance there’s a default behavior that classifies and symbolizes your data. The same is true for ArcGIS Pro. What most people will tell you is that this should not be the end point of making your map. It’s a starting point from which your knowledge of the data, its distribution and the type of message you want to communicate will all play a part in helping you decided how to modify the defaults.

That said, wouldn’t it be great if defaults were just that little bit better? Wouldn’t it be a step forward if there is some way the software can make more sensible choices in what it offers you as a first cut? Well with ArcGIS Pro we’ve worked hard to make the color defaults something that helps you out rather than something you immediately have to change.

Color can be an extremely emotive topic. What works for one set of eyes and taste might not for another. If you fill a room with cartographers it’s unlikely that any two will pick the same way to color their map. That said, color choice isn’t some random decision. It follows basic rules. If we’re making a map of continuous data on a choropleth for instance, we don’t use a qualitative shading scheme (the worst type of which is applying a rainbow colored palette). It doesn’t make sense since the map is intended to show where there is more or less. Instead, we use a sequential color scheme, either a single or multi-hue, such as the map below, where lighter hues relate to lower data values and darker relate to larger data values.

In ArcGIS Pro, as a default when you make a choropleth (Graduated Color) map, the color schemes you are offered in the drop down are filtered to show only sequential schemes that vary from light to dark. It becomes harder to make a cartographic error in selecting your colors, though of course we can’t help it if you like single hue purple color schemes but your boss doesn’t – only you can decide what hues are going to work for you and your data. The following illustration shows some of the sequential color schemes.

We’ve also made ArcGIS Pro a little smarter too. Perhaps your data varies around a critical break? Maybe you want to show areas that increase and decrease away from an average value? Perhaps you want to show how temperature varies (in degrees celsius) both positively and negatively away from zero. In ArcGIS Pro you can set a critical break somewhere in your data array which then populates your color scheme palette with a range of diverging color schemes appropriate for this type of map. You can set the Critical Break when working with Class Breaks.

Your color pallete now shows diverging color schemes which are more appropriate for this type of data. A diverging scheme shows all classes below the critical break as a sequential scheme using one hue, and all values above the break in a sequential scheme using a different hue as the following map illustrates:

There’s preset schemes set up to accommodate up to 11 classes in your classification scheme which also creates smooth visual jumps between colors. The following illustration shows part of one set of the new diverging color schemes.

If you’re making a map that shows some sort of qualitative difference you’ll need a color palette that supports that message. This is where different hues play an important part in differentiating one area from another. Here’s a selection of the new qualitative color schemes in ArcGIS Pro.

By following the ColorBrewer specification, we’ve ensured that the saturation and value of the colors is calibrated so that no one hue appears dominant. When you’re making a Unique Values map you don’t want all of the choice for sequential and diverging hues, so we present you just the options for our qualitative color schemes, all perfectly balanced with highly saturated schemes for the depiction of overlay detail on a web map or, perhaps, a set of pastels for a more subdued background map.

So the default behavior in ArcGIS Pro gives you just that little extra helping hand in selecting a color scheme that works for your data. Of course, you can see all the color schemes by checking the Show all option and you have the ability to modify any single color, develop your own color schemes and modify individual colors in a scheme.

The RGB and CYMK specifications of Cindy’s ColorBrewer palettes are included and the Color Editor supports RGB, HSV, HSL, Lab, Grayscale and CYMK color models to give you flexibility in the design process. Naturally, once you’ve created you perfect scheme you can save them out to a style which will give you rapid access to any custom styles you create for your own maps.

Defaults are part of the design of software. As we said at the start, they are the beginning of your map design process. What we have tried to support with ArcGIS Pro is a better set of defaults for color that gets you a little further down the path to making a great map than before.

In the next in the series of blog posts on the new map design capabilities in ArcGIS Pro we’ll take a look at transparency and how it’s now a core part of the way in which you can style symbols and layers.

By Kenneth Field, Senior Cartographic Product Engineer

One of the main benefits of redesigning a software package from the ground up is you can reflect on some of the limitations of what went before and deal with them head on. Most people who have a long history with ArcMap have at one time or another wanted to apply a little transparency to their symbols and have been frustrated to find the options limited (I’m one of these people!). This is something of which we’ve been acutely aware as we began the process of designing and building ArcGIS Pro. The completely redesigned graphics engine in ArcGIS Pro supports a rich array of possibilities for improved control over your graphics which has major benefits for your mapping. Let’s take a quick look at how modifying transparency for your map layers and symbols can begin to extend your cartographic possibilities.

Let’s say we’re interested in creating a bivariate choropleth map, which is essentially the graphical combination of two choropleth maps. Simply position one layer on top of the other in the Table of Contents and then apply 50% transparency to the top layer using the transparency tool on the Appearance ribbon…hey presto, the colors blend and create a bivariate map.

Breaking it down, the following two maps show different attributes, each classified into three quantiles showing the high, medium and low distribution of each variable. The small 9 x 9 grid is added to act as a legend so you can see what’s going on when the colors are combined. On the cyan colored map the legend shows the increasingly saturated color going left to right and on the magenta colored map the increasingly saturated color goes from bottom to top.

By setting the layer transparency of the top layer to 50% using the slider on the Appearance ribbon you end up with a map where the layer colors are properly combined. Because of the new way in which transparency is controlled (which directly uses your graphics card to do the processing) the result appears on-the-fly and fast!

As an aside, when creating a bivariate choropleth it’s important to limit the number of classes for each of the input layers. Here, we used 3 classes per layer. If we’d have used 4 then we’d get a 4 x 4 bivariate grid with 16 separate colors and it starts to get a little tricky to differentiate them. As a way to quickly see the relationship between two variables a bivariate choropleth is useful. We can very quickly see which countries are in the highest class on both variables, the lowest on both variables or perhaps where anomalies occur where countries are high on one variable and low on another. It’s an interesting way to visualize the relationship between variables…and it’s possible to take this concept further to create a trivariate choropleth, again simply by changing the layer’s transparency settings.

Another way to use transparency to represent more than one variable on a thematic map is to create a value by alpha map. It uses the same principles as the bivariate choropleth by combining two layers. In this case, though, the bottom layer contains the choropleth and the top layer contains a layer that represents some characteristic such as uncertainty. For instance, in the following map of the 2012 Presidential election we can see how the share of votes goes from a rich blue for counties that are predominantly Democrat to a vibrant red for those that are predominantly Republican. The marginal counties are those that occupy the merged purple colorspace. It’s a diverging color scheme that varies away from 50% equal share of votes by using colors that make sense as you go further towards a strong majority.

But this isn’t the full picture because it’s not just the majority share (as a percentage) that is important…it’s also the population density and, consequently, the voter density. As we know, different counties have very different numbers of voters. A value by alpha map uses a layer that represents the population density of voters as a way to subdue areas that have relatively fewer voters and focus our attention on the areas that have relatively more voters, and therefore more of an impact in the final tally.

Using the Color Scheme Editor we can easily create a Continuous Color Scheme that goes from near black to fully transparent by simply defining two endpoints of the color scheme. We’ll then apply it to a copy of the counties data so that areas with relatively low voter population density are shaded in the darker colors and counties with relatively high levels of voter population density are increasingly transparent.

We end up with a layer that looks like this with the transparent areas showing white because that’s the background color of the map:

When placed above our election results layer in the Table of Contents we can see how the transparent layer works:

Now, the counties that have the higher relative voter population densities shine more than those that don’t and begin to show us how voter population density has an impact on the outcome. The original map has a lot of vibrant red but the Republicans didn’t win the election. The reason is clear when you see the value by alpha map…most of those strong Republican counties have relatively few people. In fact, most of the counties with strong Democrat support are also those with higher populations which are brought into focus using the value by alpha approach.

With a slight modification we can also create a value by alpha map that symbolizes the population density layer from white to transparent which has the effect of making the counties with low population densities much lighter. It’s a different aesthetic but the same idea as above.

You may notice a few other things about this version where we’ve experimented with transparency in other ways. We added county boundaries in red for those that are predominantly Republican and blue for those that are predominantly Democrat. We added 50% layer transparency to just bring them into the same visual gamut and so they don’t dominate the map. They add a subtle extra way to recognize the distribution of voting by county and it makes for a more interesting map that using some default neutral colour like dark grey. We also used data for the location of cities, again colored these to denote a predominant Republican or Democrat voting pattern and added these into the map, again with 50% transparency. This has the effect of picking out the main populated places which adds a touch of emphasis to the cities as distinct from the counties they are in. It’s a graphical highlight

You can read more on the Value by Alpha technique in a paper published in The Cartographic Journal by Robert Roth, Andy Woodruff and Zach Johnson.

The examples so far have shown how you can use transparency at a layer level but in ArcGIS Pro, you can also apply transparency at a symbol level which can produce some great cartographic effects. Let’s see how it works on a map of global air routes.  There’s currently about 60,000 regularly flown global air traffic routes between civilian airports. Putting 60,000 lines on a small scale map will only result in a mess of overlapping lines such as:

There’s not much that’s pleasant about this map (actually it’s just a visual data dump) but if we apply some transparency to the blue lines; well, actually quite a lot of transparency – 98% – then we get a totally different version:

All that we’ve modified is the transparency of the symbol’s color but it brings a whole new dimension as well as a pleasing aesthetic to the same data dump.  In one step we’ve turned the data dump into an abstract map but one that reveals some structure about the density of air traffic corridors. This sort of technique has been used plenty of times before in maps of social media connections and also for this flights dataset but it’s worth demonstrating because it’s so simple to create in ArcGIS Pro.

The map allows us to begin to pick out densities of flight paths, particularly over Europe. The shape of the continents also begins to be seen as do the locations of key transport hubs and major cities despite no coastline or cities data being used. It’s also an abstract work of art and using transparency in different ways gives us flexibility to bring a touch of elegance and visual eloquence to our cartography. Here’s the same approach used to symbolize the U.S. street network to identify ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’.

Here we’ve demonstrated just a few ways that you can begin to use transparency in your work to create both useful maps and interesting effects. The possibilities for combining layers and symbols that have different transparency are endless. For instance…what about using transparent halos behind text instead of a solid color? That way you don’t lose any of the detail of your map, the background still appears but the use of transparency in the halo means the typographic elements get a visual lift.

One word of cartographic warning…overdoing transparency can happen. We’ve focused on thematics here and there is a temptation to use layer transparency on a thematic operational layer atop a topographic basemap. What you end up with is a map that instead of having a few easily interpreted colours, instead has thousands of convoluted color blends. Look at the following election map atop the National Geographic basemap. The use of the basemap adds visual noise, over-complicates the interplay with the basemap and the overlay as well as causing cognitive overload. Quite simply, it’s harder for us to ‘see’ the colors relative to one another and therefore harder for us to understand what’s going on.

If you want a basemap under your thematic overlay, you’re better off with something neutral like the Light Gray basemap. That way, if you apply transparency to your overlay then each color is modified in relation to the background in the same way.

Remember, thematic maps and topographic maps are different for a reason. Making them work together is more complicated than simply using transparency. Even with the use of transparency on a layer atop the Light Gray canvas basemap we lose a lot of definition. Top tip: if you’re creating choropleth (Graduated Color) maps, the map is its own basemap. Consider leaving it as it is rather than trying to tie it into a basemap.

With ArcGIS Pro you can change transparency of a layer on the ribbon, as part of a layer’s color scheme in the Color Scheme Editor and also at an individual symbol element level using the Color Editor. Any color can be transparent in ArcGIS Pro and making use of the new transparency tools can bring a real professional finish to your maps.

The possibilities are endless and we’re excited that ArcGIS Pro brings this huge improvement to the way in which maps can be styled. Next in our series of blogs on the new and improved capabilities for cartography in ArcGIS Pro…typography.

If you are experiencing recent problems with signing in and authorizing ArcGIS Pro, it is likely that your organization is still using beta versions of software licenses. These beta licenses expired on November 17, 2014. To fix this, your administrator needs to review the licenses for your organization and reassign them to currently valid licenses.

Until the license assignments are corrected, no one in the organization will be able to sign in to authorize ArcGIS Pro.

Upon the expiration of any license in your organization, the administrator must revoke the expired license so that your organization’s members are only assigned valid licenses.

1. Go to your ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS website.
2. Verify that you are signed in as an administrator of your organization and that your organization has been provisioned for ArcGIS Pro.
3. Click My Organization at the top of the site and click Manage Licenses.
4. Revoke or reassign licenses as needed.

Organizations participating in the ArcGIS Pro beta program had access to additional trial licenses to evaluate the beta software. However, with the prerelease of ArcGIS Pro in October, an organization’s license entitlements started reflecting only the product levels, extensions, and numbers of licenses included in maintenance agreements. Keeping extra beta licenses assigned following the ArcGIS Pro prerelease could result in a discrepancy where there are more licenses assigned than the organization actually has available. On November 17, 2014, any remaining unassigned ArcGIS Pro beta licenses in your organization were removed automatically, and assigned beta licenses expired.

If you have any questions regarding your license entitlement count, please contact Esri. In the United States, contact Customer Service at service@esri.com or 888-377-4575. Outside the United States, contact your local Esri Distributor.

By Kenneth Field, Senior Cartographic Product Engineer

The latest release of ArcGIS Online included a major new update that brought 3D scenes to your browser. This extends the capabilities for visualization of ArcGIS Online content by giving you the option of displaying it on a responsive WebGL virtual globe. I’ve been experimenting with different ways of displaying global flight data from openflights.org and this blog describes how I built a 3D version called Airflow Globe.

Data from openflights.org includes a global dataset of airports complete with latitude and longitude. It also includes a list of all air traffic routes (between two airports). I’ve used this data in a previous blog post to illustrate how the new transparency tools in ArcGIS Pro can be harnessed to better represent 60,000 overlapping routes. By setting transparency to 98% we get a beautiful illustration of global interconnectivity that reveals the shape of the world’s continents without any other data.

But what about all those curved lines? Surely airplanes fly in a straight line? If, like me, you often sit on an airplane listening to the conversations around you, you’ll no doubt have heard someone ask the question “why are those lines curved?” when looking at the in-flight map. I’ve had to answer that question on more than one occasion but oddly enough most people aren’t that interested in taking a class on map projections at 36,000 feet. How do you make those apparently curved lines straight? Using a globe does the job and shows those curvy looking lines on a cylindrical projection do turn out as straight lines of constant bearing on a globe. So how is it built?

ArcGIS Pro provides capabilities to author maps in either 2D or 3D (or both). I built a 2D version in ArcGIS Pro earlier this year (in ArcGIS Online here). Beginning with my 2D map, I inserted a new 3D scene in my ArcGIS Pro Project and then copied my flight routes data from the 2D map to the 3D scene. It is automatically rendered onto a virtual globe in ArcGIS Pro where I can also specify the basemap (I chose light gray to ensure the routes were legible). The routes were shared to my ArcGIS Online account as a Web Tile Layer meaning they are cached at a range of scales. I then added the airport locations data to the Scene in ArcGIS Pro and set the symbol to a simple pushpin and defined the appearance of the labels. There are over 7,500 airports so I used definition queries coupled with the data on number of active take-offs and landings to create several copies of the airport location data in the scene, each of which showing progressively more airports (based on number of take offs and landings) which I want to set to reveal at different elevations.

In the same way as you’re familiar with setting the visibility range for layers on 2D maps, you can also do the same for layers in 3D scenes, except you use elevation instead of scale as the unit of measurement. I set my airport location layers so that only the world’s busiest airports are displayed at high altitudes (when the view shows the whole globe) and as you zoom in, additional airports are added to the scene.

The position of the labels was set to ‘Top of Point’ which is rendered as a rotating billboard label in a scene in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online.

The end result is a scaleable virtual globe where content is revealed as you zoom in. This avoids the clutter you often get by displaying all your data at once at all scales (or elevations) and creates a much better user experience. Progressively revealing detail as you zoom in also invites the user of your map to explore.

I also configured my popups for the airports in ArcGIS Pro so they delivered the salient information about each airport.

The final step is sharing this scene to my ArcGIS Online account which is as simple as using the Share As Web Scene button on the Share tab. ArcGIS Pro packages up your scene and publishes it to ArcGIS Online as a 3D web scene.

All that remains is for you to log in to your ArcGIS Online account and do some simple configuration to get the web scene ready for use.

As the author and owner of the web scene you get access to the tools to modify the scene via a pane on the left of the window. The web scene itself is visible to the right, showing the additional tools available to the user.

You can add other layers (from your content or from other ArcGIS Online content). You can also create a Layer Group which I did to group my different airport location layers into a single layer (Airports) to simplify the appearance for the map user. Finally, I created some Slides in the same pane which appear as thumbnails across the bottom of the scene. These are effectively bookmarks to allow your map user to navigate to a preset position, perhaps a key location or a place that is important in your data. Once you’ve done some basic configuration, just share your web scene so it becomes visible on the web.

Users of your web scene can load it directly into their WebGL compliant browser. They can zoom, pan and rotate the globe and see your data brought to life across it. They can switch layers on or off, change the basemap if they wish (though the flight routes data in my example is specifically designed for the light gray basemap so won’t look as good across, say, imagery), and modify the environment settings to change lighting and shadows. Popups work like any other web map so clicking on the airports reveal the information I configured earlier in ArcGIS Pro.

3D web scenes are a great way to show your data in a different way. This example shows how you can make sense of flight route data in a different way when you view it on a globe, rather than a 2D map. Of course, not every dataset is going to work in a cognitive sense in 3D but web scenes open the door for further expermintation with visualization.

What’s next? 3D web scenes will develop further with new releases of ArcGIS Online to improve performance and support different needs. Currently, 60,000+ routes is too much for the browser to handle as features but it would be nice to have the flight paths arc above the surface at their actual flight elevation. Airports could also be positioned at their true elevation. All this is actually currently supported in a web scene but building a map to function is as important as just using all the technology available.

You can view the Airflow Globe web scene here.

ArcGIS Pro is now available, and it is part of ArcGIS 10.3 for Desktop. This new desktop application includes many of the features and enhancements you’ve been asking for, including multiple layouts, 2D and 3D editing, 64-bit processing, project workflows, better performance, and so much more.

2D and 3D Together

ArcGIS Pro is all about the map, and it is time to re-envision the maps that you make. 2D, printed maps are now only one piece in your total map-making arsenal. With ArcGIS Pro, you can now create 3D maps and globes as interactive scenes to visualize information with a new and more complete perspective. You can also create fully functional web scenes and share them with others through ArcGIS Online.

Modern But Familiar

Although ArcGIS Pro is different from ArcMap, it has a familiar look. The new ribbon interface will help you find the right tools and options as you need them, and the same tools you love will still be available. And don’t forget: You can install ArcGIS Pro on the same machine as any version of ArcMap.

ArcGIS Pro features hundreds of geoprocessing tools, lets you create models with ModelBuilder, and allows you to script workflows with Python. ArcGIS Pro is also a powerful raster and imagery application; use it to perform raster analysis on the fly and work with large lidar datasets in 3D.

You can get started with ArcGIS Pro right away by importing ArcMap documents, scenes, or globes. You’ll still be able to edit your existing data and geodatabases and use many of your ArcMap Python scripts and models. At the initial launch of ArcGIS Pro, you can also work with many popular desktop extensions including Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst, Geostatistical Analyst, Network Analyst, Workflow Manager, and Data Reviewer.

An Integral Part of the Platform

ArcGIS Pro is closely integrated with ArcGIS Online and the rest of the ArcGIS platform. So, with ArcGIS Pro you can author, publish, and view web layers and maps either using your organization’s Portal or ArcGIS Online instance. And you’ll have the power to create web maps directly within ArcGIS Pro. Why is this a big deal? Any web maps you create with ArcGIS Pro can be immediately accessed and used by all the web and mobile apps in the ArcGIS platform, such as Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS and Collector for ArcGIS.

More to Come

We’re just getting started with ArcGIS Pro. You can expect a more rapid release cycle to provide you with additional features and capabilities to support the work you do. We invite you to give ArcGIS a try and let us know what you think. You can submit your suggestions using the ArcGIS Ideas site.

For information on getting started with ArcGIS Pro, visit pro.arcgis.com.

Last week, Esri offered a free online Live Training Seminar, Streamline GIS Workflows with ArcGIS Pro.  Several interesting questions were posted on the chat line regarding geoprocessing and spatial analysis in ArcGIS Pro, so I wanted to take a few minutes to answer some of the frequently asked questions.

….Just two help links before I start…

Learn about geoprocessing in ArcGIS Pro here.

Get help for any geoprocessing tool here.

OK, the questions.

Are all the geoprocessing tools from ArcMap in ArcGIS Pro?

The majority of geoprocessing tools that are available in ArcMap are also available and working in ArcGIS Pro. Some tools have not yet been updated to work in ArcGIS Pro, but they will be available in a future release. Other tools process a dataset that is not supported in ArcGIS Pro, so they have been permanently removed. You can get more details here.

Explore the list of all geoprocessing tools in the Geoprocessing pane

Are there new tools in ArcGIS Pro?

Yeah! There are some great new tools in Pro, including:

• Space-Time Pattern Mining tools
• Enrich Layer, for performing geoenrichment (uses ArcGIS Online service credits)
• Tools to classify LAS dataset points by their height from ground, and calculate statistics about LAS dataset points within polygons
• Block adjustment tools to fine-tune the georeferencing of raster mosaics
• Imagery segmentation and classification tools
• And many more

Most of these new tools are also available in ArcMap 10.3, or will be added in a future release of ArcMap.

ArcGIS Pro is a 64-bit, multithreaded application. Does ArcMap 10.3 now also support 64-bit, multithreaded geoprocessing?

ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro are built on different technologies. Off the shelf (my.esri.com is a shelf, right?), geoprocessing in ArcGIS Pro is 64-bit and does not block the application while a tool is running — this is what it means to be multithreaded. ArcMap has a different technology to accomplish the same goal, called background geoprocessing, which was introduced in ArcGIS Desktop 10.0. You can download and install a 64-bit version of this technology, separate from the main installation of ArcMap. Learn more about that here.

Are geoprocessing tools faster in ArcGIS Pro?

Geoprocessing performance is roughly equivalent between ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap. 64-bit geoprocessing does not make tools faster only able to load more data into memory. 64-bit geoprocessing is more robust, results will be more accurate, and processes that used to hang or run out of memory may be able to complete successfully. Likewise, a multithreaded app does not make geoprocessing faster. More details on that below.

Tell me more about geoprocessing and multithreading

When you run a geoprocessing tool in ArcGIS Pro, it runs on a thread dedicated to geoprocessing. This means that when a tool is running you can do other things in the app, such as add new data to a map, navigate and make selections in the map, change a layer’s symbology or labels, create and modify a layout, and even find and fill in another geoprocessing tool. If you run a geoprocessing tool while another tool is running, it gets added to a queue and will start running after the first one finishes.

Two tools in the queue, one finishes so the next one starts

This behavior is the same for all geoprocessing tools run inside Pro: the tools that are included in ArcGIS, and the custom tools you build in Python and ModelBuilder.

One additional note: multithreaded is not the same thing as parallel processing! Parallel processing is a technique which splits up a big job into many smaller jobs and allows multiple CPUs or processes to work on the big job at the same time, often resulting in faster processing time. A growing number of geoprocessing tools leverage parallel processing to improve performance. In the first release of Pro, there are 25 tools that support parallel processing, including a number of geostatistics tools and Spatial Analyst tools.

Are there license level or extension changes for geoprocessing tools in Pro?

No. ArcGIS Pro has the same licensing levels as other ArcGIS Desktop applications – Basic, Standard, and Advanced. The license level and extension requirements for any geoprocessing tool is the same in ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. Refer to the tool help page to learn what license and extension is required.

Does ArcGIS Pro have ModelBuilder?

Yes, you can build geoprocessing models in a ModelBuilder view, and run those models in the same ways you do in ArcMap. You can learn about ModelBuilder in ArcGIS Pro here and get migration tips here.

ModelBuilder in ArcGIS Pro

Will models built in previous versions of ArcMap work in ArcGIS Pro?

Yes, most of the time. There are a few exceptions:

• If a tool in the model is not yet available in Pro, then the model will not work. You may need to wait until that tool is available in a future release of Pro, or you can remove the tool and try to find a workaround.
• If a tool in the model has changed in Pro, then the model will not work until you update the model (simply open the model in Pro, validate, and save). Refer to a tool’s help page to determine what needs to be changed for the tool to work in Pro. One common issue is the Calculate Field tool has changed to support only Python expressions. Learn more about that specific change here.

Caution! Models that are built new, or opened and saved in ArcGIS Pro, cannot be directly used in ArcMap. But you can always save the containing toolbox as a previous version (10.3, 10.2, etc.) and then use that toolbox back in ArcMap. It’s safest to make a copy of the original toolbox before modifying any models in Pro.

What is the difference between Tasks and ModelBuilder?

Tasks and ModelBuilder are conceptually similar, but have different goals and capabilities.

Tasks are a set of preconfigured steps through a process or workflow in ArcGIS Pro. Task steps can include any GIS tasks, such as zooming to a specific feature, editing a layer, running geoprocessing tools, authoring a map, and sharing it online.

ModelBuilder on the other hand is specifically designed to author and automate geoprocessing workflows. It includes features to support powerful operations like batch processing and simulation, and can be used to create a custom geoprocessing tool that can be used by others with different data.

Model that re-projects and adds a new attribute field to every feature class in a geodatabase

Tasks are not a replacement for ModelBuilder, and ModelBuilder tools can even be included as one step in a Task.

Will Python scripts and toolboxes written for ArcGIS 10.x (using Python 2.x) work in ArcGIS Pro?

Usually, yes. ArcGIS Pro uses Python 3.4, while the other apps in ArcGIS Desktop & Server 10.3 use Python 2.x. Despite some significant differences between these versions of Python, many geoprocessing scripts can be used as-is in both ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. In my experience there are a few common issues that will require you to update your scripts:

1. Some geoprocessing tools have been removed from ArcGIS Pro. If your script includes one of these tools you will either need to find a workaround or simply wait until the tool or a replacement has been added to Pro.
2. The arcpy.mapping module has been removed in Pro, and replaced with the new arcpy.mp module for working with maps in Pro’s new project-based design.
3. Print statements will need to be changed to use the new print function.
4. Working with Python dictionary items is a little different
5. Use of urllib2 in Python 2 will need to be changed to use the new urllib library in Python 3.

Toolbox with many Python script tools, all of which were written in ArcMap 10.1 and work without any modification in Pro.

There are other things you will need to update, these are just some common things I have run into. Read this help topic for more details.

To help you on the way of migrating Python scripts from 2 to 3, ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap 10.3 both have a new geoprocessing tool for analyzing a Python script file or toolbox and giving line-by-line instructions on required changes.

Are both personal and file geodatabases available as data sources for ArcGIS Pro?

Personal geodatabases are not supported in ArcGIS Pro, so you cannot use personal geodatabase datasets as inputs to geoprocessing tools or create those datasets as outputs.

File geodatabases are fully supported and are the default workspaces for ArcGIS Pro projects.

Do analysis services and new tools like Enrich Layer use ArcGIS Online service credits?

Yes. In ArcGIS Pro you can connect to and use several ready-to-use analysis services, including:

• http://hydro.arcgis.com/arcgis/services
• http://elevation.arcgis.com/arcgis/services
• http://logistics.arcgis.com/arcgis/services

These services make it incredibly easy to perform analysis without needing to hunt for or prepare data, read documentation, or follow best-practices. For example, you can get street network routing without needing your own Network Analyst dataset, or perform a Viewshed analysis without needing to download and prepare a DEM for your study area. These services consume credits.

ArcGIS Pro also includes a new geoprocessing tool, Enrich Layer, which enables you to add demographic, landscape, and community tapestry information to your GIS data. For example, you can add a population field to a school district layer, and the population will be correctly apportioned from overlapping census data to calculate a sum. This tool consumes credits.

Can I publish a geoprocessing service?

The first release of ArcGIS Pro does not allow you to publish geoprocessing services. In fact, you cannot publish any services to an ArcGIS server, as you can only make user connections to these servers. Publishing functionality will be added at a later release.

Is the 3D Analyst extension required for ArcGIS Pro to work with 3D maps and layouts?

The 3D Analyst extension is only required for performing 3D analysis; if you want to run geoprocessing tools in the 3D Analyst toolbox, you need the 3D Analyst extension. Even if you don’t have this extension you can still navigate, author, edit, and share 3D maps.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be happy to answer more questions in the comments.

As you will have heard by now, ArcGIS Pro is now available for download.  What does this mean for you as a Spatial Analyst extension user?  Here we’ll cover some of the specific details about what you need to know to get going.

The ArcGIS Pro experience
Much of the effort in ArcGIS Pro has been put into a new interface for visualizing, editing data and performing analysis. The ArcGIS Pro – Reinventing Desktop GIS blog post covers some of the capabilities of the new system, and an Overview of ArcGIS Pro in the online Help is a good starting point for learning more about it.

Geoprocessing in ArcGIS Pro
Some of the important details to be aware of when using Geoprocessing have been covered in the recent blog post Analysis and Geoprocessing in ArcGIS Pro. This is recommended reading that will help you get up to speed quickly.

Analysis with Spatial Analyst
From an analytical perspective, what you can do with the Spatial Analyst extension in ArcGIS Pro is very much the same as what you can do in ArcGIS Desktop.  This means you can employ your existing geoprocessing workflows in the new environment, as well as develop new ones.

Nearly all of the tools are available, and will work the same as before.  Your existing models, scripts and script tools should work (with some exceptions for other functionality that might have changed substantially, such as ArcPy Mapping).  See ModelBuilder: migration to ArcGIS Pro for some more details on compatibility of models between ArcGIS Destktop and Pro.

What Changed?
The biggest change in the Spatial Analyst experience is a result of the design of ArcGIS Pro doing away with floating toolbars.  This means that there is not an equivalent for the Spatial Analyst toolbar and the Image Classification toolbar in this release.  Rest assured that we are working on replacements for these toolbars for future releases.  Aside from the interactive components, any important changes to specific tools are noted in a subsequent section.

Toolbars
As mentioned previously, toolbars are not available in ArcGIS Pro. As an alternative to the Spatial Analyst toolbar interactive Contour, you can use the Contour geoprocessing tool.  While there is not an alternative for the interactive functionality of the Image Classification toolbar of ArcGIS Desktop, the Maximum Likelihood Classification, Iso Cluster Unsupervised Classification, Class Probability and Principal Components geoprocessing tools are still available.

Changes to Geoprocessing Tools

• Raster Calculator
  The look and feel of the Raster Calculator tool has changed a little bit in ArcGIS Pro.  The numerical keypad was removed, but you can easily type numbers directly into the Expression window.  The operator buttons have been moved to the Tools list.  You can now browse to and add additional rasters to the expression directly, without have to add them to the Rasters list first.
  
• Segmentation and Classification toolset
  For the Train Maximum Likelihood Classifier and Train Support Vector Machine Classifier tools, the Input Training Sample File must have been created in ArcGIS 10.3 Desktop. There is not the capability to create this data directly in ArcGIS Pro at the current time.
• Spline with Barriers
  Only one Spatial Analyst tool has been deprecated in Pro, that being Spline with Barriers. We hope to have this tool back in a subsequent release.
• Zonal Histogram
  Because there is no capability for creating graphs with raster data in ArcGIS Pro at the current time, the Output graph option for the Zonal Histogram tool is not available.  You can still take the output table from the tool and create a zonal histogram in other software that creates graphs from tables, such as Microsoft Excel.

Tool dialog behaviors
The interface for Pro is contextual, and as a result you may not see some of the controls in certain tools initially as you would have in the past.  For example, consider the Path Distance Allocation tool.  In the optional Horizontal Factor Parameters parameter, you won’t see the Horizontal Factor parameter until you’ve specified the Input Horizontal Raster parameter.  This is a general behavior of tools in Pro, meant to simplify the interface whenever possible but still provide full control when needed.

That about covers things from a high level view.  Please download ArcGIS Pro and give it a try!  We welcome any feedback about any issues you may find so that we can get to work fixing them for subsequent releases.

Pro in VMWare Horizon View

Desktop virtualization is increasing and will continue as more physical desktops are moved to VDI solutions and delivered from servers in a datacenter, either on premise or cloud based (DaaS).

Esri is committed to testing and benchmarking ArcGIS Pro performance, scalability, density and user experience in virtualization platforms. We have great collaborative relationships with the virtualization vendors that are most heavily used and that are delivering the best user experiences for our users.

An important note for our users that are already using ArcGIS Desktop in VDI or application virtualization environments, ArcMap and Pro virtualize differently. ArcGIS Pro is a state of the art, industrial -grade GIS software package with a new DirectX/OpenGL based rendering engine. This rendering engine allows Pro to deliver 2D and 3D data visualization along with spatial analysis that users expect of the top tier GIS application.  The user experience delivered by this rendering engine is incredible, for both 2D and 3D data.

The ArcGIS Pro rendering engine benefits from a shareable GPU that resides on the machine with the hypervisor. We use Nvidia GRID K1 and K2 cards in our test environment. They are designed exclusively for virtualization environments. For a production environment serving many users a normal graphics card won’t do. The K1 and K2 cards have multiple GPUs that can be –shared- by multiple VMs. The sharing is controlled/managed by GRID vGPU profiles. This controls how many VMs share a GPU, the graphics memory available to a VM, and therefore the VM/GPU density.

But the question “can Pro be virtualized successfully?” is often asked.

The answer is an emphatic – Yes.

The great user experience that Pro is becoming known for is attainable in virtualized environments.

We have tested ArcGIS Pro in multiple virtualization environments using our standardized Pro rendering benchmarks across all the platforms. These standardized benchmarks allow us to get a good idea of the user experience that can be expected. It also allows us to optimize Pro for these environments, as well as work with the virtualization vendors to work on their tier of the technology stack. The rendering benchmarks are executed by a Pro add-in that is designed specifically for this task. That add-in also returns and logs key indicators that can be used to help determine user experience. Some of those metrics are:

• Frames per second (FPS) – the rate at which frames requested by the application are delivered by the underlying rendering pipeline
• minimum FPS -sign of subtle pausing or jerkiness
• GPU utilization on the Host – indicator of VM/GPU density
• GPU memory utilization on the Host – indicator of VM/GPU density

These metrics provide a good sense of the user experience an individual is seeing. The minimum FPS and average FPS when used together can show the fluctuation in frame rate delivery. When minimum FPS and average FPS are relatively close that shows a consistent user experience. When there is frequent and large deltas between those two metrics that is a sign of jerkiness, thus a degraded user experience.

Using this method of testing we have seen a range of performance, scalability and user experience from the virtualization vendors. Keep in mind, delivering a great user experience for a high-end graphics application, in a VDI or application streaming environment, across a wide range of network bandwidths and at great geographic distances is obviously not easy.

In our most recent tests we benchmarked a single VMWare Horizon View VM with Pro. The host had ESXi 6.0, managed from a vSphere Web Client 6.0. During those tests we found VMWare Horizon View delivered a fantastic user experience. The FPS are consistently 25-30+, minimum FPS are in the lower 20′s. More importantly, watching the screen showed smooth fluid rendering and very responsive mouse and keyboard interaction.

On the hypervisor the GPU utilization was averaging ~25% for this demanding rendering test. And GPU memory utilization was ~15%. This gives an indication of the scalability of Pro in this environment, as well as VM/GPU density that the Horizon View platform delivers.

VMWare Horizon View delivered such a great user experience, several testers said it was as good a user experience as that delivered from a physical machine with a discrete GPU.

We will be completing our multiple VM scalability tests of ArcGIS Pro in VMWare Horizon View shortly and will publish a “first look” at those results in another blog.

Virtualization Island at EPC/DevSummit

There is a Virtualization Island at the Esri EPC and Dev Summit this week (March 9 – March 12) in Palm Springs. Stop by and try ArcGIS Pro in VMWare Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop & XenApp. We can discuss requirements and considerations when virtualizing ArcGIS Pro, as well as our test environment and your production environment.

From the Esri Insider blog post

Science at Esri continues to be an exciting initiative where we are concerned with supporting both basic and applied science, while also recognizing that there are many major themes of compelling interest to society that will drive scientific research for the next two decades. Thus we view science as helping us to understand not only how the Earth works, but also how the Earth should look (e.g., by way of geodesign), and how we should look at the Earth (i.e., by way of Earth observation in varying forms and the accompanying data science issues of analysis, modeling, developing and documenting useful datasets for science, interoperating between these datasets and between various approaches). In addition to supporting the science community, we seek to do good science at Esri ourselves, as it underpins much of what we do as an organization. This is helping us to evolve ArcGIS into a comprehensive geospatial platform for science; a platform that supports research project management and collaboration, spatial analysis, visualization, open data, and communication of science, all at multiple scales (i.e., from individual researcher to lab workgroup, to multi-department, multi-university, university-to-agency collaboration, to citizen engagement).

You can always track the totality of the Esri science initiative at esriurl.com/scicomm, but as we near the end of 2015′s first quarter, here are some highlights of the immediate road ahead.

• Two new science books from Esri Press: Mapping and Modeling Weather and Climate with GIS, already out, features leading climatologists, meteorologists, and other experts sharing approaches to advance atmospheric and ocean science through GIS. Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions, due out in the late spring, is a peer-reviewed research monograph based on papers presented at the inaugural Esri Ocean GIS Forum. It is about use-inspired science and realistic solutions for mapping, monitoring and protecting the ocean, hence the entire Earth. It will be the first Esri Press book to employ Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for citation of both chapter text and supplementary datasets (further reading on citations).
• Citizen science taking more center stage, including Esri participation at the inaugural Citizen Science Association Conference, a range of apps to support citizen science projects, and including the White House Science Fair.
• Continued progress with SciPy and multidimensional scientific datasets including the new Scientific Data Workflows package and the Dimension Explorer.
• Improvements to both the Ecological Land Units map, as we are currently seeking improved and higher-resolution land cover layers, and to our Global Population Map. See info on Esri’s new World Population Estimate layer.
• To complement the Ecological Land Units, we have begun scoping a new Ecological Marine Units (EMUs) map. An initial advisory includes scientists from the USGS, Duke University, GRID-Arendal, the Marine Conservation Institute, NatureServe, and NOAA. The environmental stratification approach will involve creating an empty, volumetric column-based mesh as a global, spatial reference standard and analytical framework, populating the spatial framework with relevant marine physical environment data including water column variables and seafloor geomorphological features, and clustering the abiotic data into ecologically meaningful, 3D regions represented as volumetric polygons. The EMUs will subsequently be analyzed against species distribution data to assess strength of relationship between distinct abiotic environments and species biogeography. Initial results expected at the end of 2015.
• Closer integration with R: Stay tuned for more information an open source bridge library on GitHub that will facilitate the passing of data between ArcGIS and R, with an aim toward build a community of people who develop R-based geoprocessing tools that are shared freely and openly, along with sample data.
• A new site license (also known as the science kit) for standalone research organizations in the US.
• Stay tuned for more information on Esri’s new research award to motivate innovative research around the ArcGIS platform by both computer scientists and domain scientists alike.
• Many are still unaware of our Visiting Faculty/Sabbatical Program. If considering an extensive time in residence at Esri headquarters, please see these guidelines.

ArcGIS Pro is the exciting new application that now comes with ArcGIS 10.3 for Desktop. ArcGIS Pro is like no other desktop application from Esri. It is an asynchronous WPF app that can be extended with the upcoming ArcGIS Pro SDK for .NET that will be available at 1.1 (Beta). ArcGIS Pro SDK for .Net is based on the Add-in extensibility pattern that requires no elevated user permissions or COM-style category registration. With this new SDK, you can leverage modern .NET features and patterns such as Task Asynchronous Programming, TAP, LINQ, WPF Binding, and MVVM to write integrated 2D /3D Add-ins using Pro’s Editing, Mapping, Geoprocessing, Layout, Geodatabase, and Geometry APIs to name a few.

At 1.1 (Final) the ArcGIS Pro SDK for .Net can be installed directly from within Visual Studio using its Extension and Update mechanism. Simply install the ArcGIS Pro SDK by clicking on the gallery entry in the Extensions and Updates dialog. Updates to the ArcGIS Pro SDK will be shown to the developer as Visual Studio notification popups.

ArcGIS Pro exposes a set of APIs written entirely in .NET. It is a new API implemented for core aspects of ArcGIS Pro – supporting 2D, 3D, Sharing, Integration with Online, Geodatabase, Geometry, Editing, Layout and more. The API is asynchronous and supports multi-threaded programming.

ArcGIS Pro SDK for .NET resources to include concepts, guide, tutorials, samples, and snippets will be available at version 1.1 of Pro on Github. An initial set of samples will be available at Beta 1.1 on Github as well as a complete API Reference online.

Note: ArcGIS Pro 1.1 Beta is planned for late April and May 2015 and will be available to all ArcGIS Desktop customer current on software maintenance.

Virtualizing ArcGIS Pro

Projects deploying ArcGIS Pro in virtualized environments are underway. As the IT industry virtualizes more desktops and applications, ArcGIS Pro will be virtualized and is expected to work well in those environments. For that reason the Performance Engineering team has tested ArcGIS Pro in VMWare Horizon View, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenDesktop+XenApp.

Using the test results of both automated load tests and hands on testing events with real humans we have a very good understanding of what it takes to successfully deploy ArcGIS Pro in virtualized environments. We also have a good idea of how many virtual machines (VMs) that a virtualization server can host while also delivering an acceptable user experience. The result of that effort is that Pro virtualizes well, and can deliver a great user experience.

User Experience

ArcGIS Pro delivers a great user experience when working with 2D and 3D data. This was a requirement of the product and delivered by design. A couple of important characteristics that help deliver this:

• ArcGIS Pro is a modern multithreaded application. Multiple threads take advantage of modern multi-core processors to perform multiple tasks concurrently such as GP processing in the background while rendering in the foreground.
• ArcGIS Pro is built with a state of the art rendering engine. This new rendering engine takes advantage DirectX and OpenGL graphics libraries.

These two aforementioned characteristics help deliver great user experience with fluid, game-like graphics. But these two characteristics also cause ArcGIS Pro to virtualize differently than ArcMap.

Virtualization Requirements

In order to virtualize Pro, it is important to properly configure the virtualization environment to support multiple VMs running a high-end graphics application such as ArcGIS Pro. This includes ensuring adequate processors and shareable GPUs on the host.

• Physical processors have enough cores to support VMs with modern multithreaded applications. This is not only for Pro but other multi-threaded applications. An example of appropriate processors are those on the servers used in the Performance Engineering lab which have two Intel E5-2695 V2 processors. Each processor has 12 cores.
• GPUs designed for virtualized environments such as those on the Nvidia GRID K2 cards. Each server in the Performance Engineering lab has two K2 cards. These are important since the DirectX and OpenGL libraries utilize the GPU to deliver the map rendering at acceptable frames-per-second. Without a GPU the rendering engine will use the Windows WARP software rasterizer. WARP is useful in a pinch, but will not deliver the same user experience as a GPU.

An example of a server which meets the above criteria are Dell R720s used in the Performance Engineering lab which have the following configuration:

-2 Intel Xeon E5-2695 V2@ 2.40GHz processors
-200Gb memory
-4TB storage
-2 Nvidia GRID K2 cards

This configuration with XenServer 6.2 and XenDesktop can support 10-12 VMs with Pro using 3D data, or 14-20 VMS with Pro using 2D data. This is dependent on the Nvidia vGPU Profile that is used. If a shareable GPU was not present, all of the processing required for rendering is moved to the virtual CPUs causing the user experience to be less than desirable.  Additionally, the same server would not be able to host the same number of VM’s.

More Information

More blogs, best practices, white papers and reference architectures will be coming out soon. If you are attending the Esri User Conference in San Diego go to the following sessions and special interest group for more technical information.

Tuesday, July 21 
-Virtualization SIG
Room 27B 12:00pm- 1:00pm
Wednesday, July 22 
-Demo Theater: Overview of ArcGIS Pro in Virtualized Desktop Environments
10:30am – 11:15am – Mapping and Visualization Exhibit Hall B
-ArcGIS Pro: virtualizing in Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop
Room 02 12:00pm – 1:00pm
-Demo Theater:Virtualizing ArcGIS Pro in VMWare View, Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp
4:30pm – 5:15pm Mapping and Visualization Exhibit Hall B
Thursday, July 23 
-ArcGIS Pro: virtualizing in VMWare Horizon View and Microsoft Hyper-V
Room 02 12:00pm – 1:00pm