3D Streaming Maps: Enhancing Your GIS Assets
Mapmaking: an amazing skill that has been guiding and forming human history for thousands of years. In recent times, computers and the internet have dramatically changed the look and multiplied the utilization of maps. Now, mass use of streaming devices is revolutionizing the way maps are created and applied. Next generation 3D maps have been deployed by the two titans of geo-location search and technology, Google® and Apple®. State and local government can now surf a wave of open architecture with low-cost, lightweight, web applications for better mapping. CyberCity 3D’s experience, described below with our Seattle prototype, should inform and enable readers to gain access to groundbreaking, efficient mapmaking and 3D rendering applications.
For this 3D Globe development program, CyberCity 3D chose Cesium® over Google Earth® for several reasons. Most importantly, Cesium is (1) open architecture while Google Earth is not and (2) Cesium is written on easy to deploy java script and is free under the Apache 2.0 license.
To build the scene, we leveraged a street network and zoning polygon GIS layers along with CyberCity 3D Smart Buildings®. The street vector and zoning polygon data are shapefiles pulled from Seattle’s Open Data Program. Our goal is to make it easy to bring in public and proprietary datasets for visualization in Cesium. The CyberCity 3D models (3D Smart Buildings) begin as Collada (.dae) files and are then converted into glTF files for use in WebGL, the web technology platform behind Cesium. After processing, the result is here to “test drive”! The downtown 3D buildings are created from high resolution imagery and modeled with our proprietary software.
We optimized the 3D buildings with efficient roof detail and measurement geometry. Constructed polygons allow the browser (Chrome®) scene to move at the speed of thought. Each 3D building has its own ID, and that data architecture that can be changed via familiar JSON and CSV file formats. Most importantly, users can select/click on a building where its automated attribute table can be viewed. In this test case, we provide geometric and spatial details on the structure such as roof type and street address. CyberCity 3D also offers an API for easy .dae/JSON downloading. The building data in this case was accessed via CyberCity’s cloud service — CC3D Now.
Building the right graphical visualization is critical. Optimizing data streams, especially the high resolution assets that we seek to render, is driven by a culmination of converging technologies (1) Cesium, a 3D Globe with product features similar to Google earth, but streamlined for easier user authoring (2) 3D streaming servers for GIS data in the form of images, 3D buildings and 3D vectors and (3) open architecture browsers from Apple and Google. Open architecture 3D Globe streaming maps with 3D buildings maximize 3D GIS at every level, serving both public and private stakeholders seeking to access and share cloud data in any form.
We can’t wait to see what the Cesium user community will build with 3D steaming maps for GIS stakeholders in both public and private sectors. The benefits include improvements in:
- Land Use
- 3D City Basemaps
- Public Safety (flood, fire, etc.)
- Tourism
- Stimulating economic development
- Geodesign
- Property appraisals and proposed development
- Environmental management and sustainability (solar, energy efficient buildings, etc.)
- Tracking real time data from key assets such as near-coast ocean buoys and other assets tied to sea-level fluctuations
- Navigation
- Geo-referenced video feeds
And, best of all, CyberCity 3D has teamed with Cesium to stream 19 cites to kick-start this emerging mapping community. Read a recent blog from the Cesium community website about this upcoming release here.
Publishing Credits: Austin Logie/ Rae DeVito/ Kevin DeVito
