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FOSS

Open Source 3D WebGIS

The article presents an Open Source Solution to Enable 3D Geographic Systems on the Web

Helton Nogueira Uchoa I Luigi Castro Cardeles I Luiz etc) that enable 3D visualization of a X3D file format.
Carlos Teixeira Coelho Filho I Paulo Roberto Ferreira
O3DG works with a simple concept: to view, interact and
update a 3D geographic information from a DBMS using a web

V
browser. At this moment, there is no intent of develop-
ing spatial 3D analysis, but in the future, there
may be some.
The concept of a WebGIS (acronym for Web-
based Geographical Information System) is
arious companies offer diffent kinds nowadays very widespread [Mitchell, 2005].
of 3D mapping solutions. In the world Solutions such as Google Maps have
of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) for mapping, become very popular in the last
there are some desktop GIS with 2D features and a few few years, thanks to the avail-
systems with some kind of visualization in 3D (such as ability of free geographic data
GRASS and OSSIM). In order to store a geographic on the World Wide Web.
data, a good FOSS DBMS would be PostgreSQL with Free and Open Source Software
PostGIS. related to geomatics and geo-
sciences are still somehow scarce,
Open3DGIS' (O3DG) basic idea is to provide a simple way to but there has been a huge increase in
integrate a 2D GIS with 3D visualization and interactivity on the the number of projects available nowa-
web, using only FOSS components and open standards. O3DGs days. In 2006, The Open Source GeoSpatial
development team defined some initial ideas: Foundation (OSGEO) was founded with the
• Integration with a 2D desktop GIS that can store and mantain following mission:
geographic data in DBMS (the most important feature). The goal
“...to support and build the highest-quality open
is to have a database model with few attributes. so that it will be
able to work with FOSS 2D GIS (QGIS, gvSIG, OpenJUMP, etc.) source geospatial software. The foundation's goal is
reading the same data source from PostgreSQL. These few to encourage the use and collaborative development of
attributes must enable the generation of a 3D model from 2D community-led projects. ” (http://www.osgeo.org)
geometry;
One of the mature open source projects is MapServer. Simply
• X3D standards are used for visualization on web browsers.
There are many free plug-ins for most platforms (Windows, Linux, put, this is a renderer that displays spatial data organized in a

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database, or in different files (the most MapServer is

common files would be: shapefiles for already Open
vectors, and tiff for images). MapServer, Source, a natural
as described in its manual, is not a full solution would be
Geographical Information System. It giving it 3D web
intends to excel at rendering spatial data features, devel-
for the web, as described in CGI MapServ- oped as a plug-in,
er Reference Manual. and also distrib-
MapServer has been used throughout uted as FOSS. This
the years in many projects where it was idea (of develop-
needed to display 2D Geographical Data ing it freely) was
over the Internet. It is, nowadays, a cheap also in agreement
and stable solution for doing so, being with the philoso-
comparable to many of the modern com- phy of the institu-
mercial web applications currently avail- tions that are cur-
able. rently sponsoring
MapServer relies on OpenGIS specifica- this project.
tions. These specifications represent a
consensus on how spatial data should be TH E I DEA
stored, queried and retrieved. BEHIND
However, neither MapServer, nor the OPE N
latest OpenGIS specifications define pre- 3D G IS
cisely how to deal with tri-dimensional Open 3D GIS
data. Albeit almost all spatial phenome- intends to enable
na can be satisfactorily modelled using a geographic data-
2D data, in some applications, base (geodata-
the knowledge of 3D posi- base) to be viewed
tion is crucial for dealing in a 3D visualiza-
with them. As an example, tion on the web,
many subterranean tubes can using a web Fig. 1 This diagram shows how Open 3D GIS works
be found under the sewer sys- browser (such as
tem of Mozilla, Mozilla
any Firefox, Opera or
urban Internet Explorer).
sce- Basically, version
nario. If 0.1 consists of a
a subway series of scripts,
needs to be written in Python,
constructed which extract spa-
under this area, tial data obtained
it is necessary to from several
know the spatial tri- sources and
dimensional distance loaded into a
between those tubes, other- database (in this Fig. 2 Random curves from which the tri-dimentional mesh was extracted
wise there would probably be case, PostgreSQL
undesirable accidents. In this case, with the module
a 2D GIS would not fit. So, there is a PostGIS). The user can choose between loading them from an already opened
need for 3D data to be correctly dis- two options: export 3D features directly MapServer rendering window using
played and analyzed in a Web GIS. As to this through the cgi_o3dg.py script HTML query methods, or loading tridi-

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OpenGEO) was loaded into MapServer

(Figure 2). This experiment is widely
accessible through the web address
http://www.opengeo.com.br/ms/o3dg/.
At first, the whole area is loaded into the
browser window. After that, the user can
select a subset of that area, that will be
seen in a larger zoom. When ready, it is
possible to generate the 3D rendering of
the selected area, through a button locat-
ed at the left of this window.

CONCLUSIONS
This article shows the first steps towards
fully integrating MapServer in order to
provide a full 3D web environment. This
first version of Open 3D GIS serves for
visualization purposes only, and was
developed with the intent to experiment
the trade-offs of dealing with 3D data
through the web.
Even though the results shown here are
somehow very simple, it is expected in
the near future that new versions should
include the capability of representing 3D
objects, such as buildings, roads and
trees, and a basic query model, with
which the user will be able do ask the
database about such 3D objects. In next
Fig. 3 X3D renderings for the study area versions, Blender will be removed from
Open 3D GIS and the solution will work
on a pure X3D engine. Also, through the
mentional meshes directly from Post- the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) project's official page, located at
greSQL. This script calls Open 3D GIS and and fully integrated with the most used http://www.open3dgis.org, it is possible
then converts all objects represented in web-browsers (although it requires an to download the current version of Open
3D to a surface, through Delaunay trian- additional plug-in in order to be correctly 3D GIS. It is distributed through the GNU
gulations. shown). X3D is a XML-based format and GPL license and has also a SourceForge
The modelling script uses Blender's has evolved from VRML. project page, located at http://source-
Python API to generate a 3D scene from After the generation of the X3D file, the forge.net/projects/open3dgis.
that tridimensional surface. Blender is an model is exported to the browser, and can NOTE: The entire article with full references can be found at www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/asia/years/2007/Apr

open source software for 3D modeling, be freely viewed by the user. Figure 1 Helton Nogueira Uchoa
animation, rendering, post-production, explains graphically the procedures [email protected]

interactive creation and playback. It is described above.

Luigi Castro Cardeles*
well known among the FOSS community. [email protected]

The scene is stored as a “.blend” file by PROCE DU R ES AN D

Luiz Carlos Teixeira Coelho Filho
default. Another option is the generation EXAM PLES [email protected]
of a X3D scene. Albeit X3D has some limi- In order to test how Open 3D GIS works, a
Paulo Roberto Ferreira
tations, if compared to Blender, it is an random set of level curves (generated
[email protected]
open format, widely recommended by automatically by a script developed at
* For Correspondence

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