How to create an animated map

Question

I am seeking to create an animated map illustrating the simultaneous movement of different objects across a large area over time. The display should be capable of playing automatically, or by manually selecting a date and/or period. I would like to retain the interrogable capability of a digital map (zoom and query a database or attributes) while paused, so I do not want to merely create raster images and and incorporate them into a slide show. Rather I want vector data moving across a base map. Does anyone know of suitable GIS software that can perform this trick?

Hugh M

Answer 1

Here are two options:

QGIS Time Manager

ArcGIS Time Slider

Answer 2

Geoserver has an animated gif option: http://geo-solutions.blogspot.com/2011/11/animate-your-maps-with-geoserver.html

but it doesn't give you an interface, to create an interface you should use a javascript library like OpenLayers, check for example the timeslider in GXP:

http://gxp.opengeo.org/master/examples/time-viewer.html