3D Annotations for Geospatial Decision Support Systems (WSCG test talk)

In virtual 3D environments, it is easy to lose orientation while navigating or changing the view with zooming and panning operations. In the real world, annotated maps are an established tool to orient oneself in large and unknown environments. The use of annotations and landmarks in traditional maps can also be transferred to virtual environments. But occlusions by three-dimensional structures have to be taken into account as well as performance considerations for an interactive real-time application. Furthermore, annotations should be discreetly integrated into the existing 3D environment and not distract the viewer's attention from more important features. In this paper, we present an implementation of automatic annotations based on open data to improve the spatial orientation in the highly interactive and dynamic decision support system Visdom. We distinguish between line and area labels for object-specific labeling, which facilitates a direct association of the labels with their corresponding objects or regions. The final algorithm provides clearly visible, easily readable and dynamically adapting annotations with continuous levels of detail integrated into an interactive real-time application.