A European Union program has helped several European partners to develop the Virtual Planet (or V-Planet) software, which will enable its users to browse and interact in three dimensions with any part of our planet, according to IST Results. "Using Vplanet Explorer, anyone can set off on a journey to discover new regions in 3D, rather than staring at a flat map and trying to picture its scenery," says Eric Martin, coordinator of the IST project. The software can also be used for technical simulations and has already been used by both Airbus and Boeing. It should be available this summer for about 10,000 euros (about $12K). Read more.
But first, how does this new software work?
The project’s software merges data from different sources into a single 3D database, using techniques such as filtering, correlation and specially developed 3D algorithms. The partners concentrated their work on surface areas and sub-metric resolution, taking advantage of improvements in pixel resolution in today’s satellite data.
"The challenge is handling large volumes of geographic data on a standard computer," says Martin. By working on a PC with a standard graphics cards, it is possible to significantly reduce the cost of working with complex Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He adds: "Our project offers users a transition from GIS to 3D, especially as our software’s open architecture enables interfacing with other software."
Below are three pictures coming from the CRS4 Image Gallery (Credit: Enrico Gobbetti and Fabio Marton).
This one shows a "real-time inspection of a complex scene containing the St. Matthew 0.25mm dataset (373M triangles), the LLNL Richtmyer-Meshkov simulation isosurface (472M triangles), and full Boeing 777 CAD model (350M triangles). The image is approximated using 4M voxels and 595K triangles." It will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2005 in August.
The English public are not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding,—between a principle and a maxim—an eternal truth and a mere conclusion from a generalization of a great number of facts.... Suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved with scarce a ray of hope of ever seeing the glorious light again. The next evening when it declines, his hopes are stronger but mixed with fear, and even at the end of 1000 years, all that a man can feel, is hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are greater than the third. This demonstrated of one triangle is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is the truth perceived at once by the reason, wholly independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
This one shows a "real-time inspection of the full Boeing 777 CAD model (350M triangles). The image is approximated using 1M voxels and 3.4M triangles." It also will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2005 in August.
This one shows a "exploration of the whole planet Mars (2G triangles) reconstructed from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter 128 samples/degree data." This image, which has been published in August 2004, is the collective work of Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno.
As you can see, this software can be used for a large variety of applications. And, in addition to customers such as Airbus or Boeing, Vplanet Explorer was used on the inauguration day of the Viaduc de Millau in France, the world's highest bridge, for a public presentation, which combined a digital model of the terrain with data from the Spot 5 satellite and modeling of the bridge itself.
"Local people had resisted the bridge’s construction, claming it would ruin the scenery," adds Martin. "Had they seen our presentation earlier, showing the bridge is not a visual disaster, they might have accepted the new edifice without hesitation."
For more information about this software, you can visit the V-Planet project page or this IST project fact sheet. The images above were extracted from these documents.
The complete project package, which includes separate modules for software installation or training, will go on sale this summer for a price of about 10,000 euros, which means it's not intended for personal use.
Sources: IST Results, June 17, 2005; and various web sites
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Graphics
Software
Virtual Reality
Vision and Visualization Apps.