Online 3D Terrain Visualization: Implementation and Testing

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and three dimensional (3D) World Wide Web (WWW) applications usage are on the rise.The demand for online 3D terrain visualization has increased not just for cartographers, geographers, geologists and psychologists but also popular among the ordinary people.The aim of study was to determine that how online 3D terrain visualization could be employed using the most appropriate GIS software by finding the applicable web sewer to launch the system.The Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) was used as the file format for visualizing 3D terrain in online environments.For that purpose, two experiments were conducted in these studies. First experiment involved the comparison of VRML output from four different GIS software in terms of terrain visualization quality (bad, acceptable, better) and data file size (VRML original, VRML compress and image).The technique of 3D terrain draped with satellite imageries was involved in these experiments.The Arc GIs 9.2 software was found to be the best GIS software which produced promising results with high quality of terrain visualization.Second experiment involved on finding the best web sewers by comparing four selected web servers at different locations for launching the system online.The Spatial Research Group web sewer which is located close to the testing environment found to be the best.This is because it has the best value and fastest time for most of the tests being done.Therefore, these findings are useful in guiding the developers to choose the most suitable GIS software for developing online 3D terrain visualization.It is also could assists the developers to choose the applicable web sewer for the development of online 3D terrain visualization

An enhanced architecture of online 3D visualization framework for monitoring coconut plantation

The visualization of existing and future agricultural plantation is becoming more important for monitoring crops as well as for decision-making, as it considerably helps to influences the production. The concept of best monitoring coconut plantation is an important stage of agricultural technology development; for instance, utilizing online 3D visualization system to support monitoring processes. The goal of this research is to present and justify an identified research problem with the utilization of a proposed enhanced architecture of online 3D visualization framework. The identified research problem was investigated since the current 3-layer framework has shortcomings, such as, weaknesses in the size of graph visualization, especially the ability to visualize large size of graph in online 3D visualization. In such situation, 3D visualization seems challenging as it generates a massive amount of image datasets and large 3D objects or graphs for each of the coconut trees. Therefore, in this novel approach, this study introduced a client/server structure-based framework which subdivides the total process into the concept of layer to overcome the existing issue. One more layer will be added to the existing three-layer framework to formalize into 3-layer framework for handling the large size graph visualization. It consists of four separate layers, namely interface layer, visualization process layer, display information layer, and database layer. Each layer has its own specific function and distinct from others. The framework was reviewed, evaluated and validated by the coconut plantation manager and 3D visualization experts; it was then used as a basis to develop a prototype to visualize the large virtual area of coconut plantation. Subsequently, the prototype was evaluated by users with diverse experience. Overall, results from the usability testing demonstrated that it can comfortably support or handle more graphs of the coconut plantation, thus achieving its satisfaction through formulating identified graph visualization problem

Enhanced 3D terrain visualization process using game engine

Recently, many information visualization regarding terrain use 2D maps which include shading and lines to show the terrain. However, the emerging 3D terrain visualization technologies and software may produce a lot of terrain information. This emerging technology is also concurrent with the growth of game engines. As for this study, Unity3D, one of these game engines, has built-in terrain engine that provides 3D terrain visualization. Moreover, this engine provides the ability to be able to publish as web application for the online environment. Based on the literature review, there are studies related to terrain visualization developed using game engines, however, majority focuses on the capability of terrain visualization in an offline environment. None of these studies focus on the performance of the 3D visualization process in an online environment. Thus, the aim of this study is to enhance the process of generating 3D terrain visualization with GIS data generated from the Unity3D game engine in an online environment. The results of the performance are compared with two different situation that is online and offline. Several experiments are conducted and performances are measured based on loading time, response time, frames per second (FPS), memory usage and CPU usage of different terrain data types and size. The study adopts design research process that is comprised of problem identification from literature review, solution development by using the process to develop the prototype needed, and evaluation by comparing the output of the visualization process. The findings show that the process of enhancing 3D terrain visualization with GIS data generated from the Unity3D game engine in offline environment is better compared to those online. This is due to the compression and the need for Unity3D web player to make contact with the Unity server for authentication and also for visualization during online. Furthermore, operating system resource needs to be used before it goes online. The main finding of this study is the new algorithm of enhancing 3D terrain visualization process using Unity3D game engine. The algorithm can be divided into three processes which are terrain data reading, terrain data conversion, and terrain data processing. It may assist the developer on how to enhance the process of developing web-based 3D terrain visualization using Unity3D game engine