DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF FEATURE-BASED 3D GEO-SPATIAL RENDERING SYSTEM USING OPENGL API

In these days, the management and visualization of 3D geo-spatial information is regarded as one of an important issue in GiS and remote sensing fields. 3D GIS is considered with the database issues such as handling and managing of 3D geometry/topology attributes, whereas 3D visualization is basically concerned with 3D computer graphics. This study focused on the design and implementation for the OpenGL API-based rendering system for the complex types of 3D geo-spatial features. In this approach 3D features can be separately processed with the functions of authoring and manipulation of terrain segments, building segments, road segments, and other geo-based things with texture mapping. Using this implementation, it is possible to the generation of an integrated scene with these complex types of 3D features. This integrated rendering system based on the feature-based 3D-GIS model can be extended and effectively applied to urban environment analysis, 3D virtual simulation and fly-by navigation in urban planning. Furthermore, we expect that 3D-GIS visualization application based on OpenGL API can be easily extended into a real-time mobile 3D-GIS system, soon after the release of OpenGLIES which stands for OpenGL for embedded system, though this topic is beyond the scope of this implementation.