Industries

Overview

There are very few industries today that do not have a geospatial component. All of these industries can now have access to new modern 3D visualization techniques.

The video card industry, driven by the high-revenue gaming market, has made tremendous gains in performance and throughput in the last several years. Roughly every six months, the performance is doubling. This has enabled Geoweb3d to offer highly accurate 3D scene generation on the fly directly from the native GIS data.

Customers can now transition their data visualization to this mature, game-quality 3D environment.  Geoweb3d technology will retain compatibility with existing solutions, while moving you forwards toward higher fidelity 3D visualization and ease of transition into Web GIS.

The industries on the right represent a sample of the markets that could leverage this technology.

Commercial

The commercial applications for this technology include real estate, conservation, civil engineering, economic development, education, marketing, tourism, public safety, public works, urban planning, landscape architecture, forestry, archeology, and a host of others.

Without addressing each market individually, the following case study of landscape visualization serves as an example for others.

A landscape architect is presenting three options for a new development. Base elevation data, imagery, and possibly vector datasets such as existing streetlights, fire hydrants, building footprints, trees and wooded areas, etc. are obtained from the local planning department. The building footprints are extruded to their correct height, and the other vector datasets are represented with instanced 3D models. In very little time, the architect has provided an accurate representation of the area surrounding the new development.

The architect then uses the networking component to duplicate these scene elements across three computers. On each, she then places modified terrain 'patches' representing the proposed grading and re-sloping for the three development options. Road polygons are added to provide a representation of the proposed new roads. Next, the 3D models of the proposed buildings, vegetation, street lighting, etc are added for each option. The result is a high-fidelity, accurate representation of the three proposed developments, within the context of the existing land and cityscape.

Finally, when concessions are made, changes can be made in real-time. This allows for “what if” scenarios, such as “what if we got rid of that patch of trees” or “what if that building was moved over there”.

Digital Cities

Digital Cities is an initiative to assemble, visualize, analyze, and share city-wide GIS datasets within an interactive and capable 3D image generation system.

In addition to the public, participants from government, business, planners, developers, etc are beginning to see the collaborative advantage of developing these datasets and applications.

Geoweb3d can fuse all available municipal, commercial, and web accessible content together to create rich 3D regional visualizations with game-quality graphics in minutes. Attribute data can be used to filter the content and create stunning 3D dataset representations. The 3D engine was designed to ingest massive amounts of content. Complete urban datasets, regardless of size, will plug and play.

Imagery and elevation data are becoming increasingly abundant, higher quality, and higher resolution. Vector and 3D model content is becoming better quality and easier to obtain. Open standards, whether for source data or display (e.g. Kml), increase the capacity for collaboration and reuse. Geoweb3d embraces open standards, allowing for a seamless transition into a rich 3D GIS environment. 

For site selection and urban development, mature 3D visualization can intuitively communicate a site or building -- existing or proposed -- within its real-life context.  Aspects of the scene can be changed on the fly, and navigation is not limited to static views or prerendered fly-throughs.  Stakeholders can freely move around and within a proposed development and understand how it fits into the surrounding landscape.

Visualizing urban datasets in true 3D is a trend that will continue, aiding in quicker, more informed decisions. Complimentary and collaborative datasets are becoming more abundant and can be loaded directly into Geoweb3d.

Whether it is the trees, utility poles, schools, parks, roads, school districts, traffic flow, or anything else, the data can be dropped in and used to construct a real-time, informative, rich, and accurate 3D visualization.  The result is an easy-to-use platform that can:

• Duplicate the current state of a city
• Provide an intuitive medium for understanding the geographic context of city assets
• Visualize proposed developments in their complete, real-world setting
• Integrate seamlessly within an existing GIS infrastructure
• Let users explore the city interactively

Planning

The use of 3D visualization within Planning is ubiquitous, despite the traditional costs.  The purpose of most planning visualizations is to strengthen public participation and acceptance, and to help the public understand proposed plans.  Therefore, it has long been recognized that 3D visualization is worth the cost because of its effectiveness as a communication medium.  Individuals intuitively understand their world in three dimensions, so information conveyed in this way does not require special training or extensive explanation.  The use of 3D visualization in Planning allows the general public to better understand the implications of a proposed development, regardless of its complexity.  Geoweb3d offers the traditional advantages of 3D visualization, with the added benefits of:

• Significantly reduced cost
• Much quicker turnaround on conceptual renderings
• Greater flexibility to make changes to the original rendering
• Interactive navigation and exploration
• The ability to place a proposed project within its true geographic setting

Because Geoweb3d allows non-experts to assemble a 3D scene in very little time, the cost savings potential is enormous.  Leveraging GIS data in order to generate a representative geographic backdrop to a proposal allows stakeholders to understand its true impact on the surrounding environment.  Entire city models can even be aquired from commercial vendors such as CyberCity3D for a relatively small cost.  The fact that Geoweb3d requires no pre-rendering of the scene means that changes to the proposal can be rapidly displayed in response to feedback from the public and other interested parties.  Because members of the public can freely explore the 3D scene, there can be greater public participation, understanding, and trust in the representativeness of the rendering.

The result is less cost, shorter time from concept to presentation, and stronger public support than has ever been possible to date.

Defense

The number of defense and intelligence agencies that could effectively leverage this technology is significant.

Creating high fidelity, accurate, rapid, informative, and robust 3D scenes directly from native GIS data is a rather new phenomena within defense and intelligence. This can greatly advance the visualization capabilities of most all defense geospatial applications.

Much of the defense industry that requires 3D visualization has been stunted due to the amount of data restructuring and preprocessing of source data that has been necessary to prepare for runtime. These database formats, both open and proprietary, suspend collaboration, minimize reuse, and increase both cost and delay. Using any geospatial data format other than that of native collection will continue to be seen as an performance workaround. Industry will demand native plug and play 3D visualization from native formats.

Once source data is adopted as standard for visualization, interoperability within defense organizations such as Command and Control (C2) and Modeling and Simulation (M&S) will take off. The offline database compatibility issue has greatly slowed progress of defense 3D visualization. Innovation has been continually sacrificed for compatibility amongst formats and proprietary toolsets.

For a single example, lets take a forward-deployable mission preview capability that could be assembled in near real-time from the latest geospatial and intelligence data.

The base elevation data is a recently flown 6 inch DEM. Specific areas of LIDAR and sensor-collected hotspots of recent battlefield damage can supplement the base elevation model with man-in-the-loop accuracy.

The base imagery is the latest satellite or aerial coverage, with near real-time updates and ultra high resolution insets provided by UAV collection sent through ArcGIS Image Server for on the fly processing and registration.

The vegetation is derived from a hybrid of GIS, classification, and battlefield collected data. The building data begins with extruded footprints, and is supplemented for accuracy within areas of interest using geospecific 3D models. Road vector data is used to supplement cultural lighting, vehicle animation, and provide detailed terrain enhancements. The weather can be current, instructor controlled, or accurate to the forecast. Hostile forces can be inserted through the DIS/ HLA protocol based on the latest intelligence or training scenario.

The fidelity of the scene will largely depend on access to dense, accurate, and reusable geospatial datasets. As this data continues to be collected and archived, the fidelity of the visual representation will continue to improve as well. The scalability of the technology, hardware, and datasets will continue to increase. Geoweb3d can provide geographic realism, thematic accuracy, and superior visualization communication.

Each branch of the various military training organizations are currently assembling geospatial reuse initiatives, albeit quite slowly. Coupling these sources of data with the growing volume of commercial geospatial datasets will allow for on-demand, near real-time visual geographic replication for any location on the planet.