Integrating Virtual Environment
and GIS for 3D Virtual City
Development and Urban
Planning
Bin Chen, Fengru Huang, Yu Fang
Peking University
Content
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Introduction
Virtual World Technology
Integrate VW with GIS
A Practice of VW Based Virtual City
Conclusions and Future Work
Introduction
• Recently innovative technologies offer
different ways of modelling and
representing urban information with realtime interaction over the Internet.
• 3 generations of virtual city technology
– Web listing by text, image and video
– "Flat" cities by 2D map
– 3D visualization virtual city
Virtual World Technology
• Virtual World is a multiuser 3D creative platform
based on virtual
environment
– Users immersed into
virtual environment by
avatars
– Online collaborative
authoring and application
development
– Different from traditional
virtual reality
Features of Virtual World
• Virtual reality
environment
– Virtual terrain and virtual
atmosphere
– Dynamics simulation
• 3D authoring platform
– Network oriented 3D
modelling
– Script language
• interact among virtual
environment, avatars and
3D models
• communicate with outer
process
• Avatar system
• Instant messaging
Virtual World Technology
• As a general purpose development platform,
VW can be used to support applications
from a wide range of fields
– Online entertainment, virtual communities
– Virtual education and trainning
– Scientific visulization
– Virtual tour, urban planning
– Emergency response and drill
– Facility Management
Virtual World Technology
• VWs are becoming
the new generation of
mainstream Internet
contents followed
after text, image,
audio and video
Integrate VW with GIS
• Extending geodata model by virtual reality
– Integrate geodata with 3D models
– Support realtime update and modification of virtual
scenes
• Online multi-user collaborative workflow
– Emphasize collaborative interaction of multi-user
– Increase performance of user-avatar interaction with
virtual environment
– New method of mapping between 2D geodata and 3D
models
Integrate VW with GIS
• Develop human-scale GIS application
– Considering features of small scale space
• Enrich general purpose development
platform of VW
– Combined with geoprocess model library
– Communicate with outer geodatabase and
workflow
VW Based Virtual City
• Advantages includes
– Network oriented
– Fast and low-cost 3D
modeling
– Multiple plans show
– Multi-user collaborative
evaluation
– Realtime plan modification
A Practice of VW Based Virtual City
• The project integrate the
real Shunde Industrial
Design City, which hosted
in Guangdong of South
China, with a virtual
environment by
geographic mapping and
3D virtual modeling.
• Based on VW server of
Opensimulator
• About 4 square kilos
A Practice of VW Based Virtual City
• A joystick allows the
user avatar to flythrough the 3D model
in realtime
• have a look from
different perspectives
at complex
topographic
structures as well as
the smallest
architectural details.
A Practice of VW Based Virtual City
• Based on the 3D visualization of the real
architecture and landscape of Shunde Industrial
City, users of different levels and objectives can
have varies activities and experiences in virtual
environment
– including interactive mapping and collaborative
modelling, solid, geometric modelling photospatial
panoramic views, and multi-user virtual worlds.
• For urban planning, the planners can construct
or move landscape elements
– such as roads, buildings, plants, sculptures, bridges,
water, etc
– based on their observation and consideration in the
virtual city collaboratively.
Conclusions and Future Work
• Applications based on virtual world are
becoming popular, virtual city and urban
planning is a typical case
• Extending VW with GIS will make virtual
city more powerful by many aspects
including immersive virtual environment
and collaborative interaction
• Further work will focus on the complete
design and development of virtual
applications of urban planning
End
• Thanks for your attention!