- suite of software, for Windows, including assembling scenes and a runtime engine
- pricing depends on application
- reads elevation from "all kinds of ASCII format", model from 3DS, images from TIFF/BMP/JPG
- the focus is on applications like engineering, architecture, civil defense, emergency management, impact studies
- they also distribute, for all Italian territory, Orthophoto, Aerials and DTM ready for use in the software
ArcView
(now ArcGIS
for Desktop Basic)
with 3D Analyst- Was $1000 + $2500 from ESRI
- In 1999, i purchased it and did a detailed evaluation; summary: many problems and limitations, not recommended for virtual terrain work
- As of 2010, the latest incarnation of this software, for the Arc 8.x product line, is called ArcGIS 3D Analyst (still $2500!), which consists primarily of a 3D application called ArcScene; surely much improved since the old 3D Analyst, it should be reviewed.
- $? from Israeli company Eternix Ltd.
- A suite of terrain visualization software with strong claims are to massive scalability ("hundred of TB") and little need for preprocessing ("capable of reprojecting geodesic elevation data on-the-fly as well as fusing multiple elevation layers of different resolutions, formats, reprojections, and datum ")
- Terra is the main application, Blaze View and Reader are viewers of different capabilities; there are extension like City and Point Cloud for specific features.
- As of 2012, there is no indication on their site at all how much it
might cost, or even how to inquire about pricing.
- Originally from Sjöland&Thyselius Virtual Reality Systems of Sweden
,
acquired by Bionatics in 2004 - Blueberry3D Terrain Editor ($quote) is a standalone 3D scene editor, includes a map editor for designing terrain, reads ESRI binary/ASCII grids, DEM, DTED, SHP, GeoTIFF
- Supports runtimes 'Bionatics Plug-in for Presagis Vega Prime' or directly to OpenSceneGraph
- "price will vary depending on location and distributor"
- Previous features of the Blueberry3D project (see the Evaluation of Blueberry Realtime Viewer as of 2001) including realtime shadows and photorealistic movie rendering, were apparently dropped in 2002 in favor of working closer to Vis-sim standards
- BS Contact Geo is €800 from Bitmanagement Software GmbH, or less for more licenses.
- A web plugin viewer that supports BS's special extended-X3D/VRML file format, which handles geospatial scenes
- The custom, proprietary extensions to X3D/VRML claim to be extensive and powerful: BSTile, BSMap, and GeoSphere provide multi-threaded whole-earth paging with overlaid vectors. ("GeoNodes")
- $15,000 from Aechelon Technology, Inc.
- toolset for editing, creation and management of scene databases, specifically for their C-Nova runtime environment
- C-Genesis runs in IRIX, Linux and Windows; the image generator (C-Nova) platform is currently SGI
- the company also sells a model library and image library
Carmenta- A suite (Carmenta Engine, Carmenta Server) with a toolkit for embedding geographic presentations into applications
- Mainly used in contract applications for the Scandinavian market, but also licensed to others
- Integrated 2D/3D with real-time view
- Fly-throughs with dynamic load of data from disk, interaction and picking
- Procedural construction of buildings from footprint data
- Win32-based, uses OpenGL, supports script interfaces
- Reads : VPF, MapInfo, ESRI shape, DFAD, ARINC, DTED, USGS DEM, GeoTIFF, ECW, etc.
CitySurf- product of Turkish company 'Piri Reis Bilişim Tek. Müh.Yazılım Eğtim Tic. Ltd.'
- very impressive free OpenGL-based viewer, which connects to servers for streaming of content: elevation, imagery, road outlines, 3D buildings, points of interest, etc.
- like Google Earth, but even faster, smoother navigation
- consists of a server, a standalone viewer, and an ActiveX client
- quite mature, reportedly in development since 2004
- apparently there are powerful GIS-like features for queries and visibility analysis, although i wasn't able to try them as the application is in Turkish language only
Cloddy- Terrain engine (SDK) for adding terrain functionality for any purpose (they list Video games, Simulation/aerospace, Navigation, Urban planning)
- It has a Preprocessor app to import and maintain massive terrain data, from real data source (SRTM, GeoTIFF, etc.); including smoothing, rescaling, re-projecting terrain input data during import.
- Integrates with either DirectX or OpenGL
- Includes procedural modeling, realtime deformation, fast collision detection
- Claims "even fast enough to use it for mobile phones"
- Licensed ($?) per year or per product
- Scenario 3D is one component of the CommunityViz suite of software ($350/$850 from Placeways LLC)
- provides a real-time 3D environment for creating and manipulating a virtual representation of a town and visually exploring different land-use alternatives
- It's unclear whether it's an evolution or replacement of the previous SiteBuilder 3D, which included: A model library of over 350 models of houses, buildings, trees, and streetscapes, integration with the ArcGIS product line, with all data coming from ESRI layers, and a "Sharable 3D Scenes" feature (presumably, some kind of exporter plus standalone viewer) lets you share scenes with other people.
- development was begun by the Orton Family Foundation, before transferring to Placeways
- High-end, around $10,000 (as of 2000) from Presagis (was MultiGen-Paradigm)
- Most of the terrain functionality is in optional extensions: Creator Terrain Studio, Airports, Buildings, Road Tools.
- Drawbacks: Artifacts are produced by their LOD edge coherence approach. Very expensive.
Cruiser- Suite of terrain visualization software, proprietary server and client, from Greek company Talent
- the client is Java-based and theoretically is portable, although as of June 2006 it was only available for Windows
- you don't buy the software, instead you hire them to assemble and host your content as a "channel", so the price can vary greatly depending on what you want to host
- the client has a typical 3D navigation interface, not unlike World Wind, etc.
- their demo content (only content existing as of June 2006) was Greece on-line,, whose interactivity consists of the usual flight, toggling of layers, measuring distances, lightweight 2D features
DbMAP 3D- Suite of products (Builder, Server, Flyer) for "visualization of various data sources: manifold textures (aerial and satellite imagery), vectorial data, 3D models and LiDAR data."
- Prices range from €280 for a single-user single-seat license, up to €10,000 for the "full" suite.
- From Italian company ABACO, which also has a number of 2D GIS and CAD software packages.
- The screenshots show it is well-suited to showing polygonal GIS layers on top of 3D landscape, as well as TINs and point clouds.
- The server component has a GIS-database focus on the backend, connecting to "Oracle Spatial and Locator, PostgreSQL GIS, MySQL GIS, and also simple"; it also supports shapefiles and OGC WMS.
EarthVision
- $? from Dynamic Graphics, Inc.
- for building 3D models of underground data; primarily used by the petroleum industry
- uses OpenGL, runs on both Windows and Linux
- presumably it's realtime 3D; a '3-D Viewer' is a extra-cost module
- from Equipe Electronics Ltd., UK
- toolset for "rapidly creating large area Geo-Specific terrain models"
- processes raw data source, including very large textures, to produce a FLT model
- "Autopopulation" feature claims to recognize trees, woodlands and buildings in aerial photos, and places 3D models accordingly
- Historically runs on Linux and SGI Irix, as of 2009 only on Windows. Price depends upon application and license requirements.
- For Linux/Mac/Windows, from QPS (Fledermaus team is New Brunswick, Canada)
- Focuses on scientific visualization (geology, hydrography, bathymetry)
- Supports DEM/DTED as well as volumetric, contour, line segment, seismic etc. data
- They have a free viewer iView4D for Fledermaus datasets, which does basic viewing.
- for Windows/Linux from Balfour Technologies LLC, a small consulting firm in Bethpage, NY
- a browser/server combination which claims "four-dimensional" data, which apparently means that it stores a time component for animated objects
- the browser component is $80
- oriented towards use in AEC, real estate, transportation applications, and has many examples of use in these fields including working with the NY State Dept. of Transportation and the TRANSIMS project
- it appears oriented toward contract services with Balfour, rather than as a standalone product
- planet-rendering technology of Paul Hansen, available for custom solutions
- includes includes a full earth model, continuous LOD, paging of high-resolution texture and elevation, and draping of vectors
- a set of utilities that run within Bentley MicroStation
- includes GEOPAK Road, GEOPAK Site, and GeoTerrain ($2000), which have extensive tools for shaping and editing terrain, placing roads and buildings
GeoFlyer
3D Maps- from Italian company GeoMind, spun off from Infmedia in 2004
- their technology takes elevation, imagery and 3D models as input, and produces scenes which are viewed in Macromedia Shockwave
- Historically: it was primarily intended for service work, not as a product for sale, and an option existed to use server-side rendering (!) where the 3D frames are sent down as a series of JPEG images
- In 2002-2004 their shockwave demos had awkward navigation and other issues, but these went away over time (as well as shockwave)
- As of 2015, their product is primarily an iOS app.
- from UK company VIRTALIS; presumably priced by contract?
- Co-developed by the British Geological Survey (BGS) as specialized software for large, high-res geological datasets
- Seems to do the usual import of elevation, imagery etc. with tools to do analysis, profiles, etc. with special support for sub-surface layers, wells, flood simulation; see their Youtube channel.
- Because it is a VR company, their terrain tool is oriented towards immersive display of the geology
GeoViz- From SAIC, who calls it "WebCentric GeoSpatial Collaboration", a "Web-based, commercial off-the-shelf, geospatial presentation tool providing 2-D, 3-D and 4-D views"
- Integrates with ESRI and OGC formats and servers
- The entire GeoViz user interface is accessable via a Web browser.
- pricing unknown
Geoweb3d- Released in 2010. $4000 per seat for the desktop application, with an optional SDK, and a free browser-plugin viewer.
- Integrates with ArcGIS and also reads GIS data directly for a 3D runtime environment. Marketing says "seamless collaboration, interoperability, discovery, scalability, and delivery of geospatial data"
- In addition to the usual terrain and GIS feature geometry, it can read building models from Google's 3D Warehouse (as Collada) and has advanced rendering of day/night lighting effects.
- Version 3 (2012) adds support for realistic water, LIDAR, more KML features, webmap tile layers.
-
a
cross-platform 3D engine from Saab
Training Systems AB - closed-source but with very flexible licensing, esp. non-commercial use is free; commercial use is $1000 per license
- does CLOD terrain with IRMA (Improved RoaM Algorithm), or with multithreaded paging of static terrain, e.g. in the Terrapage format
- besides the terrain functionality, it is a full-featured scene graph library with some advanced features: full support for hierarchical GLSL shaders, physics integration with Meqon physics library, easy integration with MacOSX/QT/X11/wxWindows, distributed network graphic objects
- The amazing Swiss-army knife of geospatial data, for Windows.
- Free for use as a 2D/3D data viewer, or commercial ($400) with conversion and some editing capabilities.
- Supports a very large number of formats, including: DLG, DRG, DEM, DOQ, SDTS DLG/DEM, LULC, GTOPO30, Shapefiles, GNIS, DXF, BIL/BSQ/BIP, ArcInfo formats, GeoTIFF, SDTS, CDED, image formats with world files, DXF, Surfer Grid, MrSID, ECW, ERDAS Imagine, DTED, MapInfo MIF/TAB, Terragen, DGN, SRTM, TIGER, ADRG, CADRG, VPF/VMAP, S-57, GPS waypoint/track formats, more!
- opens files directly from archived files (.gz, .tar.gz, .zip)
- automatically clips the collar for DRGs, and better yet, gives direct access the onlines dataset to download seamless DRGs and other USGS data
- sophisticated vector display, e.g. roads with width and map symbols
- From Google, runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and mobile devices.
- It is a client for for a vast proprietary geospatial content database,
including licensed data from many providers.
- $400 for standard version, alternately a free version is available with limited functionality
- on 2005.11.12, reviewed the free version here: Google Earth 3.0 Evaluation
- Very limited GIS-like functionality includes adding waypoints and draping vectors.
- The server was an important part of the Keyhole product line (Keyhole EarthServer). However, after Keyhole was bought by Google, there was no mention of the server on Google's site.
- A simple DEM viewer for Windows, was $200 from MS MacroSystem, Netherlands; no mention of price in 2013.
- can draw contours, supports stereo rendering
- uses GDAL to support a large number of heightfield formats
Imagine
VirtualGIS- $$$ from Intergraph
- ERDAS Imagine is a high-end GIS package, with a realtime 3D option
- over 90 different raster and vector formats
- a reviewer said "while moving around, the different resolution sectors were visible, as there is a sudden change from low resolution to high resolution"
- $? from Supresoft (Hong Kong)
- Claims "GIS 3D visualization, 3D environment modeling, true 3D landscape reconstruction, virtual reality, real time roaming for huge amount of data etc."
- Options include MagiXity for city modelling and IMAGIS 3DBrowser, some sort of standalone viewer
- Reportedly, they have a strong following in China and Japan.
- It is hard to tell more, because as of 2011, there is no English on their website; Chinese only.
- a GIS-oriented 3D terrain package from AAM (New Zealand)
- the main app is a tool for "modeling, manipulation and analysis of 2D/3D GIS data and 3D CAD data within a Virtual Reality environment" with a impressive list of features including realtime shadow analysis
- connects directly to SDE (Spatial Database Engine) and Oracle Spatial 8i/9i
- reads numerous formats including SHP, ArcInfo ASCII/Binary Grids, DTED, Socet Set, and many 3D model formats
- stereo rendering, VR hardware support, SQL queries, 3D sound, road planning
- originally built on the WorldToolKit library by Sense8; probably ported at some point later
- a set of several CAD tools for modelling terrain, road and buildings from Eagle Point
- some are standalone, others are made to run within AutoCAD or MicroStation
- Surface Modeling ($600): creates TIN terrain meshes
- Visual Landscaping [gone?] ($1200): includes fences and walls, with a database of 1,100 plants, trees, shrubs
- Plant Database ($300) was the 1,100 plants by themselves
- Virtual Simulator ($300) was a runtime simulation environment, is it still offered?
- a suite of terrain products, built on Windows and OpenGL, from RIS (Rapid Imaging Software)
- LandForm/Gold ($500) is a straightforward terrain overlay assembler and viewer (DEM, GeoTIFF): drape and fly-over, export to VRML, stitch together model and map files from multiple adjacent areas, import, store and play back waypoints.
- LandForm/C3 ($1000) adds some additional file formats (e.g. DTED, CADRG)
- LandForm TerrainServer ($25,000): "receives requests for a region of interest, checks on the availability of the data, assembles the terrain model including overlay imagery, topography, and entities and then ships the model to the client application."
- As of 2013, it seems the LandForm products are no longer sold, but underlie their "SmartCam3D Fusion" product.
LandSIM3D- €7500 from Bionatics (France)
- Complete package to import GIS data and model, construct a 3D scene, visualize and create presentations.
- In addition to the usual elevation and imagery inputs, it supports procedural construction of trees, linear features like roads/rivers/railways/powerlines.
- Procedural ground detail including rocks, and fairly realistic vegetation with automated distribution
- Scenarios and a time feature, to show the scene at different times, or a planning scene with project alternatives.
- Tried the Saint-Privat demo on 2009-03-24. Good: It is an impressive complex scene. It runs smoothly at a high framerate. The procedural ground detail looks good. Bad: The plant billboards are unrealistic, very dark and blocky, although this is partially compensated by having a large number of species. It consumes a surprising 1.2 GB of RAM to run, at 100% CPU even when minimized. There is no interaction to the demo besides flying around.
-
Was
€500 from 3D Geo GmbH for the LandXplorer Studio application; as of 2009
it is now Autodesk LandXplorer. - realtime flyover and interaction with both physical and abstract terrain data
- does draping of multiple textures, runtime LOD for both elevation and textures, and automatic recording of video sequences
- originally built on top of MAM/VRS, an object-oriented C++ 3D graphics library project of German academics, primarily Jurgen Döllner
- Modeling and Animation Machine (MAM) is the scene graph API
- Virtual Rendering System (VRS) is the lower-level rendering API
- related academic papers, postscript files available
on their site:
- J. Döllner, K. Hinrichs: Geo-Visualization with the 3D Modeling and Animation Machine. IEEE Proceedings Computer Graphics International, 1998
- K. Baumann, J. Döllner, K. Hinrichs, O. Kersting: A Hybrid, Hierarchical Data Structure for Real-Time Terrain Visualization, IEEE Computer Graphics International '99, 85-92, 1999
- J. Döllner, K. Hinrichs: An Object-Oriented Approach for Integrating 3D Visualization Systems and GIS, in print, Computers & Geosciences, Elsvier, 1999
- G. Buziek, J. Döllner: Concept and Implementation of an Interactive, Cartographic Virtual Reality System. International Cartographic Conference, Ottawa, 1999
Leveller
- $50 from Daylon Graphics
- easy-to-use terrain/heightfield/bumpmap modeler for Windows
- many, many editing features - like a paint program for heightfields
- imports from bitmaps, NTF, SDTS, DEM, raw binary and some GIS formats
- imports/exports to TerraGen, BT, more
- exports to several 3D formats
- £500 per year from DTM
Software (McCarthy Taylor) (UK)
- marketed to the application of virtual terrain called DTM - "Digital Terrain Modelling", which focuses on small areas (single plots of land) and deals heavily with contour lines and earth-modifying operations
- visualization includes draping imagery and realtime flythroughs
- uses: "Land Surveying - Road Building - Construction - Civil Engineering - Earth Moving - Mining - Waste Management - Dredging - Accident Investigation - Environmental Management - Archaeology - Geology - Visual and Environmental Impact"
-
~$5000
from Makai Ocean Engineering, Inc. (Oahu, Hawaii) - A very powerful viewer for large elevation, imagery, and LIDAR data, in a unified global viewing interface.
- It comes with access to several large online datasets, including bathymetry, aerial coverage of Oahu, a colorized LIDAR dataset of Ottawa, Canada, and even volumetric data of a hurricane.
- Version 1.2 (beta, January 2013) exposes Voyager's import capabilities. I did a brief evaluation, and import didn't work particularly well; elevation scale was wrong, navigation had bugs, imagery didn't appear at full resolution, LAS import failed. Import might more correctly be called an alpha.
- Despite that, as a viewer for the supplied datasets, it remains impressive, if a bit unstable.
- $300 from Digital Wisdom
- creates simple relief maps in both 2D and 3D
- imports USGS DEM, SDTS DEM, Landform Panorama NTF
- textures can be draped over height data, but the sample images don't show this
- uses OpenGL, but not for realtime rendering (?)
- $140/$330 from Natural Graphics, Mac/Win32
- non-realtime landscape renderer, can create QuickTimeVR panoramas
- imports DEMs, SDTS, and GTOPO30, can drape DRGs
- cheap, but not as impressive output as the more expensive landscape renderers
Novapoint Virtual Map- $? from Vianova Systems Finland Oy / Novapoint, developed by Viasys Oy
- An add-on tool for AutoCAD-based applications for creating terrain scenes and distributing them with a viewer, including an ActiveX viewer for web distribution
- Requires and extends AutoCAD and Autodesk MAP. As an example of its CAD focus, importing of elevation such as DEM is done by first converting it to AutoCAD '3D Face' elements(!)
- The ActiveX viewer is quite nice, with smooth rendering and good camera control, although it has a strange habit of aggressively culling on-screen objects.
- pricing is mysterious; there is nothing in English online about how it might be purchased
nwGIS
- from Nineteenseventyfive (South Africa) (2002)
- advanced terrain runtime includes continuous LOD, terrain and texture paging, seamless from sub-meter pixels to full spherical planet
- very portable (Windows, Linux, consoles, etc.)
- uses a combination of custom tools and ER Mapper (was $5k) for database development
RealSite
/ InReality
- high-end tools from Harris Corp. for creating city models and doing visualization and simple analysis
- appears to be mostly intended for the wireless antenna placement market
- InReality (runtime)
- $3500 for Win32, $4500 for Irix
- has features like "Mensuration" which allow the user to interactively measure between any two points and get the current distance and location
- RealSite (urban model builder)
- provided on a variable-cost service basis, not a standard product
- claims to input: "NIMA standards, COTS CAD and geospatial tools"
- claims to output: Inventor, FLT, VRML, SEDRIS, Shapefiles
- can (semi-)automatically produce texture maps for the building geometry
- At the release of Microsoft's Virtual Earth 3D in November 2006, RealSite was revealed to be the source of VE3D's building models.
re-lion Builder- A tool for the "construction and maintenance of geospecific and geotypical terrain databases"
- Imports models from diverse data source for rapid scene assembly; exports to OpenFlight, 3DSMAX, directX
- Fast procedural generation of infrastructure including road networks, with a focus on driving simulators.
- It appears to be used primarily in customized solutions for teh Vis-Sim industry by the Dutch company that makes it, Re-liON
- Terrain modeling plugin for non-realtime rendering package Rhino 4.0
- Typical price $660, or $128 educational
- Input can be "points, pointclouds, curves, meshes" and apparently USGS DEM
- Triangulates the input, supports breaklines
- "Geographical Feature Detection" identifies areas such as water surfaces, apparently by their normals
-
STK
from Analytical Graphics (AGI) comes in three levels: Basic (free), Professional,
and Expert, with many optional Add-On Modules - Displays realistic 3D views of "space, airborne and terrestrial assets, sensor projections, orbit trajectories and assorted visual cues and analysis aids"
- Pricing ranges greatly based on options ($700 up to $80k), with discounts for academic/noncommercial users
- In 2012, they released a free WebGL engine called Cesium that can display and interpolate time-dynamic data from the STK family of products.
- a set of 3D scientific visualization software which includes capabilities for realtime elevation rendering
- supports labels, contours, animation output, stereo display, and a very large number of formats via GDAL
- $200, and they are happy to provide custom features upon request
- a software suite from Simmersion of Australia, with an office in the USA
- $4,125/yr, or less if only part of the software is needed
- consists of three applications (World Generator, Environment Editor, World Simulator) for the complete process from input data to visualization
- format support is modest (just DXF for elevation) but the runtime claims good scaling, "a single built environment can be over 1000 sq. km, smooth rendering of over 5 million polygons."
- the company also provides 3D modelling, development and consulting services
- they have the major data provider GetMapping as a business partner
- €2000 for their Builder, with a free Viewer, from French company SPACEYES
- multi-layered rendering, with both raster and vector GIS layers draped on the terrain
- directly imports elevation grids from DEM (GeoTiff, MapInfo ASCII grid), ortho-images from GeoTiff, ECW, etc. and GIS vector from Shape, Mapinfo, etc.
- OpenGL-based rendered, adapted ROAM (adaptive quadtree) algorithm for the 3D model, memory-paged approach for texture
- capability to add 3D models (3DS, VRML), text labels, image and icons, and to digitize vector features in the model
- AVI movies, high-resolution screen shots and 360° panoramic views
- the free Viewer has some features to compute thematic maps from elevation (shaded relief, slope map, aspect map, colored relief, contour lines) utilizing GDAL
- suite of technologies from Skyline Software - TerraDeveloper, TerraBuilder, TerraExplorer
- licensing is around $15k for the SDK, $50k for Builder, and $2k/seat for the pro runtime (includes tools), free runtime
- uses a DirectX-based renderer with support for "3D clouds"
- claims to have no limitations on terrain or texture resolution
- very weird technical claims - supposedly "the terrain is rendered using a ray tracing algorithm and so the 3D acceleration has no effect." !!
- TerraBuilder imports elevation from .bmp, .mpt, .mpu, .grw, .raw
- part of the Terramodel and HYDROpro Terramodel product lines ($$) from Trimble
- the products do the full range of DTM operations from gathering points through creating models; the visualization aspect is a small part of the whole
- basic Terramodel with simple 3D functionality is included with the purchase of Trimble GPS or TotalStation hardware; additional modules with DTM features can put the total cost anywhere from $1000 to $15000; most users will only need a few of these modules
- Around $23k from TerraSim, Inc.
- services-oriented company, focusing on accuracy rather than realistic appearance
- imports from DEM, DTED, DLG, LULC, DOQ, more
- Creates TIN meshes with integrated roads.
- Exports to FLT, VBS2, Steel Beasts Pro, Havok Vision Engine, Havok Tools, and the SWORD runtime from MASA Group.
- "3D real-time solution for visualizing high-res 3D terrain data interactively", for Windows, from ViewTec Ltd. (was Swiss, now USA)
- Product is TerrainView-Globe ($900-$5625), with add-on modules RemoteControl ($4500), CMAX ($2250), Video ($2250), Web (free), and view-only apps TerrainView ($750), TerrainView-Lite (free)
- does terrain LOD (Terrex Inc. SmartMesh)
- can import all common elevation, raster, vector, and 3D model formats
- interaction includes querying the terrain, manipulating culture objects, labeling points of interest, defining flight paths, recording to AVI, and much more
- they also offer "a commercial internet streaming service of high resolution digital 3D databases covering different countries"
- with the Web add-on, content can be read directly from the web, and the viewer is available as an OCX
- On 2004.05.18, did a brief evaluation of the TerrainView demo
- around $15k (as of 2000) from Presagis (was Terrex, Terrain Experts Inc.)
- high-end software for generating terrain intended for realtime rendering
- "revolutionary SmartMesh™ (patent pending) technology which surpasses
all existing triangulation schemes with seamless interblock boundaries"
- organized in rectangular regions but uses interblock polygons to match between levels of detail across these regions
- integrates roads and rivers into the terrain skin
- input: DLG-O, LULC, DFAD, DTED, Shape, and DEM (1-degree and UTM-based
DEMs)
- "only supports a single UTM USGS DEM at one time"
- output: OpenFlight™ or their own "TerraPage" format for large area paging
- comes preconfigured with ~500 texture patterns for soil, trees, urban
areas, water, roads, and fences
- these patterns are derived from the texture library published by CGSD
- three terrain visualization products (Viewer, Designer, Editor) from Italian company Terra Nova
- their summary of functionality: "maps from raster formats (DTM, Slopes, Exposition, Shading, etc.), maps from vector formats (2D or 3D TIN Shapefile, level curves, altimetric bands, regular points grids, etc), 3D processing (add altitudes to 2D or 3D Shapefiles, calculate the 3D area in a polygonal Shapefile, calculate volume differences)"
- they are Windows applications, and web viewers including IE plugin, Java and Flash-based
- there are extensions for Weather, Time, and Floods
- as of 2008, the site seems a little old ('news' is from 2004, screenshots are missing, Flash demos are 404, trying to log in gives an ODBC error)
Tinman
3D SDK- SDK imports elevation and imagery, its runtime does fast CLOD rendering, i.e. "consumes unlimited amounts of geodata and processes them into ready-to-use terrain modules."
- It is classic right-angle TIN CLOD like from the 1990s, but it handles grids up to 1 Billion x 1 Billion heixels. As they point out, this compares favorably to game engines like Unreal (8k*8k), and CryEngine and Unity (4k*4k).
- Unique and material textures, decal textures, texture splatting.
- Keeps GPU terrain data in a single vertex buffer and a single index buffer, draws the terrain as a single triangle strip(!)
Trian3D Builder- from German company TrianGraphics; €9900 for standard package, more for modules (Geotypic, Roads (advanced), Airport, Buildings (advanced))
- A vis-sim oriented scene building application. You import a variety of elevation, image and vector data, and it writes a FLT file with the whole scene, ready for use in a vis-sim runtime environment.
- Built on OSG and hence supports .osg/.ive formats directly; OSG works as a free viewer for their output.
- Extensive generation of geotypical databases, including randomized distribution of rural and urban buildings, with procedural geometry
- Can import road data from OpenStreetMap, Navteq, etc. Can export to OpenDRIVE for vehicle simulators.
- Library of "high quality environment real-time models with 500 entries including buildings, vehicles, vegetation etc."
- Several attractive demo scenes available in OSG and FLT formats.
- In 2011, they licensed the popular game middleware Gamr7 Ürban PAD, for "flexible, dynamic and lightweight buildings", although Gam7 itself folded in April 2012.
- fairly simple non-realtime renderer for textured heightfields
- $300, but the free demo provides nearly all functionality
- reads GTOPO30, SDTS Raster Profiles, and several flavors of DEM
- requires converting them to an intermediate 24-bit TGA file
- includes an innovative free tool
TFMAKE:
- automatically retrieves USGS DEMs from various servers, gets the corresponding texture information from the Tiger server and adapts these two data sources such that they fit together perfectly
- specialized visualization engine for planetariums, primarily for astronomical rendering, from Swedish company SCISS AB
- it has a planet rendering option, Halo Surfaces (no relation to the Halo game) which uses Duchaineau's ROAM2 algorithm for "planetary surfaces of arbitrary resolution"
- pricing isn't mentioned, presumably far less expensive than the planetarium hardware it's designed for
- works on single-display PC platforms, fisheye PC platforms and multichannel SGI and PC platforms.
vGeo
- Virtual Global Explorer and Observatory- from MechDyne, high-end, Linux and Windows
- pricing is specific to each customer
- an "interactive data fusion and visual analysis tool" for general data visualization, which includes some terrain functionality
- supports primarily scientific data formats such as netCDF and HDF, but not common terrain formats such as DEM
-
$2475
from 3D Nature, for Windows, dongle-protected - non-realtime terrain rendering package, more fully-featured version of World Construction Set (see Artificial Terrain page)
- adds a very large number of features, including support for diverse projections, georeferenced imagery, queries to feature databases, randomizing of objects, procedural generation of walls and simple buildings, OpenGL preview, irregularly shaped terrain, more
- 3DNWorld is a user's community site for users of WCS and VNS to exchange components, share tutorials and show off their work - some is artwork and fantasy, but an increasing amount is accurate, non-realtime terrain visualization!
- they have a useful page of Sources for DEM and Vector Data
VWorldTerrain
/ vieWTerra- Terrain engine, from French developers, with a huge list of features.
- Paging of elevation/imagery databases, landscape terraforming (deserts, rain forests, mountains, etc.) with local vegetation, variable weather conditions (wind, temperature, snow, rain, mist, sandstorms, etc.) and advancing time (dawn, daylight, dusk, night), autonomous animals and vehicles, blended procedural textures, extrusion of buildings for rapid urban scenes, and much more.
- VWorldTerrain is the engine that was used in the Eingana edutainment title (2000-2002, see Tourism page) which has continued development since that time.
- There is a viewer platform/SDK (vieWTerra) based on the VWorldTerrain engine, with a pricing structure starting at €690.
- Terrain Tools ($11,000) generates scenes and VRSG ($10,000) provide the runtime and SDK
- from MetaVR, Inc.
- expensive tools which appear to be mostly oriented toward military customers
- claims to support massive data such as large areas at 1m resolution
- add-on tools for interfacing with maps ($7000) only mentions military map formats
Ecomodeler
was Can$6000, Can$150 for a 90-day eval, from Viewscape3D (defunct company as
of 2009)
RoadViz
TerraShader
/ TerraTracer