Virtual Reality in Cartography: Immersive 3D Visualization of the Arctic Clyde Inlet (Canada) Using Digital Elevation Models and Bathymetric Data

Abstract

Due to rapid technological development, virtual reality (VR) is becoming an accessible and important tool for many applications in science, industry, and economy. Being immersed in a 3D environment offers numerous advantages especially for the presentation of geographical data that is usually depicted in 2D maps or pseudo 3D models on the monitor screen. This study investigated advantages, limitations, and possible applications for immersive and intuitive 3D terrain visualizations in VR. Additionally, in view of ever-increasing data volumes, this study developed a workflow to present large scale terrain datasets in VR for current mid-end computers. The developed immersive VR application depicts the Arctic fjord Clyde Inlet in its 160 km × 80 km dimensions at 5 m spatial resolution. Techniques, such as level of detail algorithms, tiling, and level streaming, were applied to run the more than one gigabyte large dataset at an acceptable frame rate. The immersive VR application offered the possibility to explore the terrain with or without water surface by various modes of locomotion. Terrain textures could also be altered and measurements conducted to receive necessary information for further terrain analysis. The potential of VR was assessed in a user survey of persons from six different professions.

Accuracy Assessment of a UAV Block by Different Software Packages, Processing Schemes and Validation Strategies

“…Accuracy of ground coordinates of markers was set at 0.5 cm for the horizontal component and 1 cm for vertical one, which are the values obtained from the topographic adjustment. For the manually measured image coordinates of the markers, accuracy was set at 1 4 of the pixel size, while for automatically measured image coordinates of tie-points, accuracy was set at 1.5 pixels, corresponding to three-times the overall reprojection error. In doing so, we followed the suggestions of the program developers, to be adopted in the case of blurred images; we also verified that the implemented strategy gave the best results in terms of residuals for the CPs.…”

“…The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveying purposes such as mapping, 3D modeling, point cloud extraction and orthophoto generation has become a standard operation in recent years. The large availability of so-obtained 3D models force the scientific community to explore and develop new tools for visualizing and sharing the achieved products and, as a consequence, open new scenarios strictly related to the use of virtual and augmented reality that for sure need to be considered as an important research topic even more related to the geospatial information [1,2]. Within this framework, the high quality of commercial off-the-shelf cameras, easily implemented in UAV platforms and the development of new generation software packages created an important revolution in the geomatics field.…”

Raumbezogene Visualisierung trifft auf Landschaftsforschung und „Pinballology“: Beispiele der Landschaftskonstruktion in Flipperspielen

“…Thanks to developments in neighboring academic disciplines and related industries, such as gaming, informatics and (other) engineering fields, the opportunities for enhancing the visualization of geographic space are undergoing a permanently ongoing development. This leads to new variants of media that can include many new facets and features, such as high-quality sound (e.g., Berger and Bill 2019;Edler and Vetter 2019;Indans et al 2019;Hruby 2019;Lammert-Siepmann et al 2017;Schito and Fabrikant 2018), information graphics (Dunlap and Lowenthal 2016;Meier 2017;Schiewe 2017), 3D animation (Edler et al 2018a;Kersten et al 2018;Lovett et al 2015), and gamified interaction techniques (Ahlqvist 2011;Kapenekakis and Chorianopoulos 2017;Lütjens et al 2019)-to name just a few examples that are intensively discussed in recent international literature of cartography and related disciplines.…”

Immersive VR Experience of Redeveloped Post-industrial Sites: The Example of “Zeche Holland” in Bochum-Wattenscheid

“…Moreover, VR techniques facilitate the exploration of perceived atmospheres, as they arise under different lighting conditions (see also Kazig 2019; Weber 2017). In addition, different approaches to visualizing terrains in VR projects have recently been suggested in the cartographic and geodetic community (see Lütjens et al 2019;Lindner et al 2018).…”