The 3D Image-Based analysis framework uses 3D virtual environment models as computational tools to determine visibility-based characteristics of these models.

Among others, this technology can be used to compute the visibility of landmarks, solar potential analysis, and “vista quality” in virtual 3D city models. 

Publications:

• Effiziente Verschattungsberechnung für die Solarpotenzialanalyse durch bildbasierte 3D-Analyse
• Approaches Towards Visual 3D Analysis for Digital Landscapes and Its Applications

This is a collection of methods to add information to point clouds, such as distance and local environment information.

It can be used to extract building models, detect changes in point data and visualize planning of urban areas.

This technology enables the automatic generalization of single 3D buildings, building complexes, and complete virtual cities to various cartographic scales.

Publications:

• Abstract representations for interactive visualization of virtual 3D city models
• Techniques for Generalizing Building Geometry of Complex Virtual 3D City Models

Different concepts and implementations of interactive 3D viewers that use the Web View Service (WVS), a 3D rendering service, as data source.

The concepts shield the clients from the arbitrary complexity of the geovisualization pipeline while at the same time providing interactive access to a 3DGeoVE. 

Publications:

• Image-Based, Interactive Visualization of Complex 3D Geovirtual Environments on Lightweight Devices
• Service-Oriented Interactive 3D Visualization of Massive 3D City Models on Thin Clients
• Image-Based Strategies for Interactive Visualization of Complex 3D Geovirtual Environments on Lightweight Devices
• Service-oriented Visualization of Virtual 3D City Models
• Datenintegration in dienstbasierte 3D-Geovisualisierungssysteme für mobile Geräte

Ensemble of services for composing service-oriented 3D geovisualization systems. Currently implemented: Web View Service (WVS, 3D rendering service).

Decomposition of the 3D geovisualization pipeline into distributed services to facilitate reuse of services and lightweight clients.

Publications:

• Towards Advanced and Interactive Web Perspective View Services
• Chaining Geoinformation Services for the Visualization and Annotation of 3D Geovirtual Environments

This rendering technique enables the interactive rendering and creation of multi-perspective views, such as panorama maps, for virtual 3D city and landscapes.

It enables the combination detail and overview within a single view, resolves occlusion and is suitable for navigation and orientation tasks as well as for focus + context visualization.

Publications:

• Multiscale Visualization of 3D Geovirtual Environments Using View-Dependent Multi-Perspective Views
• Interactive Multi-Perspective Views of Virtual 3D Landscape and City Models
• Interaktive, multiperspektivische Ansichten für geovirtuelle 3D-Umgebungen

The 3D annotation Technology enables to enrich 3D virtual environments with external and embedded annotations of static and dynamic content. The technology is available as a independent library component.

Annotations are vital elements for the comprehension of virtual environments. The optimal placement with respect to the 3D scene and the annotation content is a hard computational problem.

Publications:

• Seamless Integration of Labels into Interactive Virtual 3D Environments Using Parameterized Hulls
• Efficient View Management for Dynamic Annotation Placement in Virtual Landscapes
• Dynamic Annotation of Interactive Environments using Object-Integrated Billboards
• Ein Konzept zur dynamischen Annotation virtueller 3D-Stadtmodelle

This technology provides functionality to automatically extract, modify, and visualize 3D landmarks within 3D virtual environments.

3D virtual Landmarks are an important object category that facilitates orientation and navigation within virtual environments. 

Publications: 

• A Concept of Effective Landmark Depiction in Geovirtual 3D Environments by View-Dependent Deformation

This approach proposes the use of feature surface properties (textures) as first-class elements in geocomputations (e.g., simulation, analysis in city models).

Integration of feature surface properties into GIS enables new ways to solving problems, such as solar potential or visibility analysis, in a generic fashion.

Publications: 

• 3D Feature Surface Properties and Their Application in Geovisualization

Smart interaction technologies leverage object semantics of a virtual scene to support the control of the virtual camera and thus eases the navigation for the users. This includes the application of gestures.

Such smart interaction techniques avoid “getting lost” situations within complex virtual 3D environments and has various applications: from modern mobile devices to tourist information systems.

Publications:

• Sketch-Based Navigation in 3D Virtual Environments

Given the 3D geometry of a virtual city model and a set of oblique images of the same geographic region, this technology generates building façade and roof textures in a fully automatic way, using consumer graphics hardware.

It enables photo-texture generation for complete virtual 2D city models and represents the basis basis for derivation of non-photorealistic textures or textures encoding surface feature properties of buildings.

This technology enables communication of spatial information using 3D geovirtual environments. Same-time and time-shifted work processes can be supported by communication tools.

It is suitable for retaining the spatial reference of information over time (e.g., for public participation scenarios, communication purposes).

Publications:

• Geospatial Annotations for 3D Environments and their WFS-based Implementation
• Combining Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaboration within 3D City Models

This interactive technique uses generalized clipping to combine different geometric representations (e.g., levels-of-abstraction) within a single image. It can be used to implement focus+context visualizations using 3D lenses.

Publications:

• 3D Generalization Lenses for Interactive Focus + Context Visualization of Virtual City Models
• Interactive Rendering Techniques for Highlighting in 3D Geovirtual Environments