GEARViewer: A State of the Art Real-Time Geospatial Visualization Framework

Information

• Publication Type: Conference Paper
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • VRVis Competence Center
• Date: 2011
• ISBN: 978-3-9503110-1-3
• Lecturer: Stephan Mantler
• Editor: Manfred SCHRENK, Vasily V. POPOVICH, Peter ZEILE
• Booktitle: Proceedings of CORP 2011
• Conference date: 18. May 2011 – 20. May 2011
• Pages: 345 – 354

Abstract

Geospatial visualization is playing an increasingly important part in the planning and public discussion of infrastructure projects. In addition to pre-rendered highly realistic imagery, interactive viewers have become an important tool for this task. Advances in rendering technology and performance have reduced the gap in visual quality between pre-rendered imagery and real-time applications, and the additional possibilities of a live visualization may become important tools in the decision making process. Historically, the step from GIS data or a highly detailed architectural model to a representation that is suitable for real-time display has been complex and required a very finely tuned workflow. On the other side, the general public is relatively spoiled by the extremely high quality of computer games and CGI films. Naturally, a tremendous amount of work and time is typically spent to fully optimize computer games for the available hardware. This is usually not possible for geospatial visualization tasks, but nonetheless current interactive viewing applications must strive to achieve similar quality and performance to be successful. In this paper, we present GEARViewer, a state of the art geospatial rendering framework developed at VRVis. Developed in close cooperation with major stakeholders in the Austrian road and railway infrastructure, it bridges the gap between GIS applications and real-time rendering, and achieves a high degree of realism and performance while supporting many of the tasks involved in geospatial visualizations.

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{Mantler-2011-GEAR,
  title =      "GEARViewer: A State of the Art Real-Time Geospatial
               Visualization Framework",
  author =     "Stephan Mantler and Gerd Hesina and Michael Greiner and
               Werner Purgathofer",
  year =       "2011",
  abstract =   "Geospatial visualization is playing an increasingly
               important part in the planning and public discussion of
               infrastructure projects. In addition to pre-rendered highly
               realistic imagery, interactive viewers have become an
               important tool for this task. Advances in rendering
               technology and performance have reduced the gap in visual
               quality between pre-rendered imagery and real-time
               applications, and the additional possibilities of a live
               visualization may become important tools in the decision
               making process. Historically, the step from GIS data or a
               highly detailed architectural model to a representation that
               is suitable for real-time display has been complex and
               required a very finely tuned workflow. On the other side,
               the general public is relatively spoiled by the extremely
               high quality of computer games and CGI films. Naturally, a
               tremendous amount of work and time is typically spent to
               fully optimize computer games for the available hardware.
               This is usually not possible for geospatial visualization
               tasks, but nonetheless current interactive viewing
               applications must strive to achieve similar quality and
               performance to be successful. In this paper, we present
               GEARViewer, a state of the art geospatial rendering
               framework developed at VRVis. Developed in close cooperation
               with major stakeholders in the Austrian road and railway
               infrastructure, it bridges the gap between GIS applications
               and real-time rendering, and achieves a high degree of
               realism and performance while supporting many of the tasks
               involved in geospatial visualizations.",
  isbn =       "978-3-9503110-1-3",
  editor =     "Manfred SCHRENK, Vasily V. POPOVICH, Peter ZEILE",
  booktitle =  "Proceedings of CORP 2011",
  pages =      "345--354",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2011/Mantler-2011-GEAR/",
}