PERSPECTIVE TERRAIN VISUALIZATION - A FUSION OF REMOTE-SENSING, GIS, AND COMPUTER-GRAPHICS

Techniques are presented that are used for the perspective visualizati on of natural landscapes in the field of environmental planning and ci vil engineering. In order to obtain a photo-realistic visual simulatio n, we use digital elevation models (DEM) and images generated by remot e sensing techniques. The remote sensing systems used in this work inc lude Landsat Thematic Mapper, SPOT HRV, and aerial photography. To ach ieve high quality perspective views, we first have to pay attention to an appropriate preprocessing of the remote sensing imagery. This incl udes radiometric corrections and image enhancement procedures as well as a precise geometric correction that is executed to achieve accurate coregistration of the different images with the terrain model. A mosa ic of several images at different resolutions is stored, together with the DEM, in a database covering an extensive area. Projection softwar e permits the user to specify all interior and exterior orientation pa rameters of a virtual camera to compute any perspective view. To obtai n greater realism, atmospheric effects can also be simulated. Our visu al simulation approach using a virtual scene permits automated image m ontage of 3D simulated objects. The achieved results show that this te chnology can be used in many different domains where terrain visualiza tion is required.