Representation of geographic terrain surface using global indexing
Jan Kolář · 2004
A global 3D geographic model and a feasible solution for its visualization and management remains a challenging vision. The existence of a reusable platform would provide an unprecedented potential for development of applications related to geography and facilitate comprehension of geographic data. Unlike cartographic maps, 3D models can capture the geometry of geographic features without flattening the environment, without cartographic projection---can avoid geometric distortion. More interestingly, however, 3D models can be composed into a single model spanning the whole world; it can be navigated visually in order to access information and data in the same geometric space as we navigate ourselves in our real environment. This article attempts to narrow down the overhead of problems in visualization of 3D geographic information and intends to identify fundamental issues common to other systems in the domain. Handling entire terrain is inherently coupled with global spatial index. This problem is overviewed and a solution is proposed. Afterwards the data representation of the essential surface in geography is introduced. The representation deals