Hello!

I am currently developing a Java application that will track the land
covered by a moving vehicle as it works on a task.  The GUI shows the
progress of the task in what I call pseudo-real-time.  A good way to
picture the application is to think of an application that would show
you the area that you have mowed while you are mowing your lawn.  The
problem that I am having is finding the most economical but accurate
way of keeping track of the progress of the vehicle and displaying it.

Currently, I am using a BufferedImage to store the progress of the
vehicle.  Each time I receive the vehicle's status from GPS and
inertial sensors I paint the area covered into the image and then paint
the image into a JPanel (after all appropriate AffineTransforms, etc).
Unfortunately, there is a big limitation to this approach.  Namely, the
size of the image is limited by the memory on the computer being used.
The tracking system needs to be very accurate, thus I have been
assuming that 1 pixel = 1 square centimeter.  The area covered by the
vehicle can be very large, thus the image needs to be very large to
ensure we don't go outside the bounds of the image.  I have tried
making it so 1 pixel = 100 square centimeters, but it still doesn't
have the desired result.

Another approach I tried in the past involved using the
java.awt.geom.Area class to store the area covered by the vehicle.
Each time the vehicle's status was reported, I would add the new
position covered to the Area object, perform the necessary
AffineTransforms depending on the heading of the vehicle, and then
paint the area into the JPanel.  This works great at first, but
performance quickly degrades.  This degradation is a result of the Area
containing a LARGE number of paths.

I am new to the Java 2D API and new to graphics in general.  Therefore,
I was hoping somebody would have advice on how to handle such a
problem.  Is my image approach the best one?  Is there another class
that would fit my needs better that I haven't come across?  Any insight
would be appreciated.

Paul