3D geovisualization services for efficient distribution of 3D geodata

Design, implementation, and operation of services for interactive 3D geovisualization are faced with a large number of challenges including (a) processing and integration of massive amounts of heterogeneous and distributed 2D and 3D geodata such as terrain models, buildings models, and thematic georeferenced data, (b) assembling, styling, and rendering 3D map contents according to application requirements and design principles, and (c) interactive provisioning of created 3D maps on mobile devices and thin clients as well as their integration as third-party components into domainspecific web and information systems. This report presents a concept and implementation of a service-oriented platform that addresses these major requirements of 3D web mapping systems. It is based on a separation of concerns for data management, 3D rendering, application logic, and user interaction. The main idea is to divide 3D rendering process into two stages. In the first stage, at the server side, an imagebased representation of the 3D scene is created by means of multi-layered virtual 3D panoramas; in the second stage, at the client side, the 3D scene is interactively reconstructed based on these panoramas. Beside the interactive client introduced earlier, scalable variant for provisioning of virtual 3D city models is described, that utilizes the capabilities of our rendering service for data preparation.