Real-Time Shadows for Large-Scale Geospatial Visualization

Information

• Publication Type: Bachelor Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visualization Group
• Date: October 2018
• Date (Start): 20. January 2018
• Date (End): 23. October 2018
• Matrikelnummer: 01227211
• First Supervisor: Werner Purgathofer

Abstract

A flood is an often unforeseen event, which can happen at any time and causes enormous damage. Simulations are used to predict risks and respond to them early, like in the decision-support system Visdom. The real-time application is useful and offers many possibilities, e.g., simulations of the rising of the river over a certain time or the building of barriers. However, there is a lack of a true-to-life representation of the entire scene, which is important, as the visualization of the results must be understandable also for non-experts, such as decision-makers or the general public. More precisely, shadows are missing in the application so far, although they are particularly well suited to recognize relations of objects to each other. This bachelor thesis covers the implementation of shadows in Visdom to increase the realism of the scene. This is very complex for such big scenes on city or even country scale and requires many self-developed strategies, as there are no ready-made solutions. We present an adaptation of the cascaded shadow maps algorithm, which provides a good way to subdivide the scene for better results in shadow quality. Further improvements are presented to increase the quality of the resulting shadows, as well as avoid occurring artifacts. The result of this work is a flexible visualization of soft shadows for a variety of different-sized scenes in real time, which increase the realism and spatial perception and further do not influence the performance too much.

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BibTeX

@bachelorsthesis{Niedermayer_2018,
  title =      "Real-Time Shadows for Large-Scale Geospatial Visualization",
  author =     "Michaela Niedermayer ",
  year =       "2018",
  abstract =   "A flood is an often unforeseen event, which can happen at
               any time and causes enormous damage. Simulations are used to
               predict risks and respond to them early, like in the
               decision-support system Visdom. The real-time application is
               useful and offers many possibilities, e.g., simulations of
               the rising of the river over a certain time or the building
               of barriers. However, there is a lack of a true-to-life
               representation of the entire scene, which is important, as
               the visualization of the results must be understandable also
               for non-experts, such as decision-makers or the general
               public. More precisely, shadows are missing in the
               application so far, although they are particularly well
               suited to recognize relations of objects to each other. This
               bachelor thesis covers the implementation of shadows in
               Visdom to increase the realism of the scene. This is very
               complex for such big scenes on city or even country scale
               and requires many self-developed strategies, as there are no
               ready-made solutions. We present an adaptation of the
               cascaded shadow maps algorithm, which provides a good way to
               subdivide the scene for better results in shadow quality.
               Further improvements are presented to increase the quality
               of the resulting shadows, as well as avoid occurring
               artifacts. The result of this work is a flexible
               visualization of soft shadows for a variety of
               different-sized scenes in real time, which increase the
               realism and spatial perception and further do not influence
               the  performance too much.",
  month =      oct,
  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/2018/Niedermayer_2018/",
}