3D Terrain Visualisation for Web GIS

The Web is a user-friendly interface that can be used to display geographical information with rich forms.

3D visualisation of terrain detail on the Web is a disaster for users with a low bandwidth network, due to the large amount of geo-data involved.

A selective visualisation method has been developed to facilitate 3D Web surfing. In addition, a Web GIS framework has also been designed featuring a hybrid 2D-3D interface.

Methods

The 3D terrain model used is constructed from a 2D contour data file. A Location-dependent method is used to generate regular grid points for the digital elevation model (DEM) in various levels of detail (LOD).

Compared to LOD technology which displays distant areas in low resloution, the selective visualisation method used ignores the barely visible area and visualises only the area within current view.

Users will be able to update the displayed area by navigating in the 3D browser or directly querying the database through the user interface.

Other facilities include the local and world map viewers, coordinates display, information board and query pad.

Contact
Please contact Ms. Zhu Chao at
czhu@camtech.ntu.edu.sg.