Interactive 3D Visualization of a Large University Campus over the Web

Abstract

Nowadays, with the rise and generalized use of web applications and graphical hardware evolution, one of the most interesting problems deals with realistic real-time visualization of virtual environments on web browsers. This paper shows an on-line application to dynamically visualize a large campus on the World Wide Web. The application focuses on a smooth walk through a large 3D environment in real-time as an alternative way to index geographically related information. This way, contents are continuously filtered based on viewpoint¿s position. This can be made thanks to the availability of different models corresponding to different levels of detail (LOD) for each modeled building. A server storage model has been purposed including all models, compound of meshes, textures and information. The technique is based on an algorithm that performs a progressive refining of the models, according to the distance from the viewpoint.