Rendering Interactive Maps on Mobile Devices Using Graphics Hardware

Information

• Publication Type: Master Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Rendering and Modeling
• Date: November 2012
• Date (Start): 27. March 2012
• Date (End): 30. September 2012
• Diploma Examination: 19. November 2012
• First Supervisor: Michael Wimmer

Abstract

Mapping and navigation applications on mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets are increasingly popular. Modern maps are often rendered directly from vector data. Since the performance of a previous CPU-based map renderer was unsatisfactory, a hardware accelerated map rendering prototype for mobile devices based on OpenGL ES 2.0 was created. A novel hybrid rendering architecture is introduced to combine the advantages of tile-based and true real time rendering solutions. The architecture consists of a tile server that renders base map tile images and a client to display them. The new third component, the post-processor, draws dynamic map features such as icons and text above the tiles in real time, enabling a 3D fly-over mode. All components run inside the same process directly on the device. For the rendering of lines, an important map feature, a new rending algorithm was developed, enabling to draw lines of arbitrary width with one of three different line cap styles. Additionally the line can be stippled with a user-defined pattern where each line dash is rendered with the selected cap style. Antialiasing of the line is supported with an arbitrary circularly symmetric filter kernel of userdefinable radius. To accelerate icon rendering, a texture atlas is used to store the icons, and a simple but effective packing algorithm has been developed to generate the atlas online.

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BibTeX

@mastersthesis{ROESSLER-2012-OGLES,
  title =      "Rendering Interactive Maps on Mobile Devices Using Graphics
               Hardware",
  author =     "Lukas R\"{o}ssler",
  year =       "2012",
  abstract =   "Mapping and navigation applications on mobile devices such
               as smart phones or tablets are increasingly popular. Modern
               maps are often rendered directly from vector data. Since the
               performance of a previous CPU-based map renderer was
               unsatisfactory, a hardware accelerated map rendering
               prototype for mobile devices based on OpenGL ES 2.0 was
               created. A novel hybrid rendering architecture is introduced
               to combine the advantages of tile-based and true real time
               rendering solutions. The architecture consists of a tile
               server that renders base map tile images and a client to
               display them. The new third component, the post-processor,
               draws dynamic map features such as icons and text above the
               tiles in real time, enabling a 3D fly-over mode. All
               components run inside the same process directly on the
               device. For the rendering of lines, an important map
               feature, a new rending algorithm was developed, enabling to
               draw lines of arbitrary width with one of three different
               line cap styles. Additionally the line can be stippled with
               a user-defined pattern where each line dash is rendered with
               the selected cap style. Antialiasing of the line is
               supported with an arbitrary circularly symmetric filter
               kernel of userdefinable radius. To accelerate icon
               rendering, a texture atlas is used to store the icons, and a
               simple but effective packing algorithm has been developed to
               generate the atlas online.",
  month =      nov,
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2012/ROESSLER-2012-OGLES/",
}