Ben Discoe
Oakland, CA
(408) 646-9160   ben@vterrain.org    Skype: bdiscoe

I am looking for a C++ developer position leveraging my 20 years of experience (in 3D and/or Visualization and/or Geo) within reasonable transit distance of Oakland.

Skills

• Primary: C++, Secondary: Java, JavaScript, other scripting languages
• Environments: Windows, Linux
• Areas of Expertise: Geospatial formats and geodata processing, terrain visualization, point clouds, procedural content generation, framerate and scene quality optimization, 3D file formats, 3D/6D input devices, global sources of geodata, immersion and usability issues in interactive 3D applications, GUI design and implementation, webmapping.
• Commonly Used APIs: OpenGL/OpenSceneGraph, wxWidgets, GDAL/ORG/PROJ4, libLAS
• Commonly Used Tools: Visual C++, Global Mapper, Blender, Cygwin, GDAL/OGR, wxFormBuilder, Xfrog, Photoshop, Expression Web, CMake/SVN, InnoSetup, Doxygen

Experience

• October 2011– November 2012: Google, Mountain View, CA: Self-driving Car
  • Developed an Android app (Java/OpenGL-ES) to show interactive 3D sensor/roadmap data from the car on a passenger-side tablet, including surrounding vehicles and realtime LIDAR pointcloud data, sampled to transmit smoothly over USB.
  • Working with UX designers to implement (C++/google3) the in-dashboard 2D GUI which converts the complex state machine of the car into a user experience focusing on simplicity, clarity and safety. After months of iteration, user testing and re-design, the UI was received very positively by the wider team.
• October 2010– October 2011: 510 Systems, Berkeley, CA
  Developed (in C++/OpenGL) a paged rendering framework, built on OpenSceneGraph, to process and smoothly draw datasets with billions of LIDAR points. Gained expertise on vertical datum transformation, an important but oft-neglected aspect of 3D geodata.
• 2004 - 2008: VTP Consulting / Freelance development
  Numerous clients, chiefly in Europe and Australia.  I provided development services to implement desired 2D/3D visualization functionality by adapting the VTP and other open-source libraries to meet client needs.  (For ESRI people, the VTP software is probably best explained as a completely open alternative to ArcScene).
  
• July 2002 - June 2004: Open Planning Project, New York City, NY
  Added a level of 3D WFS client functionality to support their efforts in advancing a free, distributed, and open geographic information infrastructure.
• April 2002 - June 2002: Itron/Linesoft Inc., Spokane, WA
  Provided consulting on geospatial data issues and C++ development support for the interactive 3D component of a new product, TL-Pro, an engineering tool for power transmission lines.
• March 2001 - March 2002: Virtual Technologies Inc. (Immersion Corp.), Palo Alto, CA
  Did development, testing and documentation for a legacy 3D IDE SimStudio, transforming it into a sellable commercial tool, VirtualHand Studio.  Worked with the CyberGlove VR device.  Re-wrote their primary application (Device Calibration) from Java to C++ with open, platform-independent APIs.
• February 2001: Planet 9 Studios, San Francisco, CA
  Wrote JavaScript, both embedded in HTML and in VRML Script nodes, for an "Web 3D" merchandise visualization application, Coleman Virtual Backyard.
• 1997-2000: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA
  Developed tools and applications intended for advanced parallel architectures, supporting distributed simulation and rendering. Created massive interactive 3D environments with high image quality based on real geospatial data to catalyze the demand for future, higher-performance hardware platforms.
• 1992-1997: Sense8 Corporation, Mill Valley, CA
  Did development, testing, and support for WorldToolKit, at the time the world's most mature 3D/VR API, and World Up, a powerful development environment for rapid prototyping of 3D/VR applications. I also did world creation for service contracts.  Handled all aspects of product development, including documentation, demo and sample creation, customer training, interface design, technical support, version control, trade show presentation, debugging and feature implementation, quality assurance and user tutorials.
• 1990-1992: VersaSoft Corporation, San Jose, CA
  Development, testing, and support for dBMAN, a portable DBMS. Ported the application to many different platforms including DOS, Macintosh, TOS, AmigaOS, and many varieties of Unix. Wrote and indexed a 400-page manual using FrameMaker. Wrote and supported a portability layer for cross-platform GUI development.
• 1989: Vision Research Lab, California Institute of Technology
  Wrote, in C and ARexx, a communication and visualization interface for a data acquisition device gathering data on the process of vision in live brains.

Example Work

	2011: Design and implementation of a rendering framework and testbed for efficiently paging very large LIDAR datasets (hundreds of GB), built on Qt and OSG.  This example shows points colored by laser intensity, and a gradient profile section.
	Design and implementation of the software for the Virtual Terrain Project, a set of Open Source libraries and applications which enable the rapid construction of interactive 3D scenes from geospatial data for anywhere on the planet.  Fully internationalized UI supporting a user community in 132 countries. Creation and maintenance of a corresponding website acknowledged as the globally leading information source on the subject of terrain visualization.
	Implemented real estate map search for Clark Realty, with PHP/SQL on the server generating JavaScript on the client, AJAX to the mapping API, and a C preprocessor to convert/reproject parcel boundary GIS data from Shapefile to WKT for database storage.  Refined the UI based on client feedback.  Notable for being the only regional property search to display the polygon outline of every property in a slippy map.

Education

• 1988-1990: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
  Pursued a degree in Engineering and Applied Science / Computer Science

Other Activities

• Aside from software development and supporting the worldwide VTP user community, I have built and maintained websites for many nonprofit organizations, have produced food and a cash crop of tea (Camellia sinensis) on my organic family farm, operate the farm's blog, taught food sustainability subjects, provided education and maintained a mailing list relating to sustainable tropical agriculture.