Visualizing Large 3D city models in the Web

In this 1.5h tutorial that I gave at the Web3D 2014 conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada I presented different tools to prepare large geospatial data sets (in particular 3D city models), so they can be visualized in the Web.

The presentation starts with a motivating example explaining how 3D city models in the Web can help urban planners and decision makers to present their policy plans to the public to engage all stakeholders in the planning process.

Most of the talk consisted of a live demo where I actually converted a large CityGML model to X3D to put it into the web browser using WebGL/X3DOM.

Transcript

1. VISUALIZING LARGE 3D CITY MODELS IN
   THE WEB (FOR PUBLIC PARTICIPATION)
   Michel Krämer
   

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3. PROJECT www.iqmulus.eu
   IQmulus
   

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4. PROJECT www.urbanapi.eu
   

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5. Planner
   

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6. Decision maker
   

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7. Public
   

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8. Public
   

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9. Citizens
   666
   

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10. NIMBY
    Not In My Backyard!
    

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11. LULU
    Locally Unpopular
    Land Use
    

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12. NIMFY
    Not In My Frontyard
    Either!
    

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13. NOPE
    Not On Planet Earth!
    

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14. CAVE
    Citizens Against
    Virtually Everything
    

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15. WUTBÜRGER
    Citizens Against
    Virtually Everything
    

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16. TOP-DOWN POLICY MAKING
    Politics
    Citizens
    

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17. BOTTOM-UP POLICY MAKING
    Politics
    Citizens
    

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18. POLICY CYCLE
    SURVEY
    ANALYZE
    PLAN
    STAKEHOLDER
    ENGAGEMENT
    IMPLEMENT
    EVALUATE
    

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19. HOW TO
    IMPLEMENT THIS?
    

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20. HOW TO
    REACH A
    AUDIENCE?
    LARGE
    

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21. HTML5 Logo by W3C
    

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22. WHAT ABOUT
    REALLY
    3D CITY MODELS?
    LARGE
    

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24. MAINZ
    240 km²
    147 048 buildings
    240 terrain tiles
    240 orthophotos (JPG, 25cm/px)
    (XYZ TINs)
    (CityGML, LOD2)
    5.4 GB
    = 59 305 acres
    

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25. STEPS
    Transform
    Convert
    Optimize
    Simplify
    Merge
    1 2 3 4 5
    

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26. SUMMARY
    Transform & convert buildings
    Optimize buildings for the Web
    1
    2
    3
    cs3d-transform (CityServer3D)
    aopt (InstantReality)
    Transform & convert terrain
    cs3d-transform
    

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27. Simplify terrain (optional)
    Optimize terrain for the Web
    4
    5
    6
    MeshLab
    aopt
    Merge orthophotos
    gdal_translate (GDAL)
    

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28. Merge and convert terrain
    Transform merged terrain
    7
    8
    9
    cs3d-merge
    MeshLab
    Simplify merged terrain
    MeshLab
    

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29. OUTLOOK
    X3DOM 2.0
    Shape Resource Container
    SRC – A Streamable Format for Generalized Web-based 3D Data Transmission
    Max Limper, Maik Thöner, Johannes Behr, Dieter W. Fellner
    Streaming in the Web
    OGC 3D Portrayal Service
    Workshop: Geospatial information on the Web, Mike McCann (& Volker Coors)
    Right after the break
    

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30. Michel Krämer
    Fraunhofer Institute for
    Computer Graphics Research IGD
    Fraunhoferstraße 5
    64283 Darmstadt, Germany
    michel.kraemer@igd.fraunhofer.de
    +49 6151 155 415
    

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