Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 15 Geological model
split into single, hovering
layers (from Armstrong
2012
)
6 True-3D for Rural and Urban Landscape Visualisation
Glacier recession is one of the most critical global phenomena in the context of
global climate change or global warming. A prominent project using—amongst
others—true-3D visualisation methods dealt with glacier recession in the Dachstein
Massif in the Eastern Alps of Austria (Bruhm et al.
2012
).
The aim was to visualise the changes of the glacier coverage over the last
150 years, taking 1850, 1915 and 2002 as examples (Fig.
16
). Historical and
recent maps, moraine mappings, a DTM and aerial photographs from 2003 to 2006
served as cartographic data sources. The software packages ERDAS Imagine,
ESRI ArcGIS, 3D Visual Nature Studio, Awaron Tucan and Digi-Art 3DZ
Extreme V7 were used to generate the depictions of the three time slices. The
cartographic results were containing in a range of cross-media products. That
means, one and the same dataset was used to generate different visualisations:
Several overflight simulations, an animation which shows the changes of the ice
thickness, a lenticular foil hardcopy display which uses both the 3D- and the flip-
effect and a stereo-overflight for back-projection facilities (Bruhm et al.
2010
,
2012
). To the authors' knowledge, within this project for the first time cross-media
methods have been applied to truly three-dimensional cartographic products.
Figure
16
is just a two-dimensional depiction. The original is a lenticular foil map
using the flip mode to show the three different states of glacier coverage.
Regarding the three-dimensional visualisation of rural landscapes the well-
established and well-tested but basic anaglyph method has to be mentioned here.
Although it is not auto-stereoscopic, it is still frequently used because of its easy
application both in terms of data generation for display (free online software) and
data observation. An example is the Global Ice Mapping from Space (GLIMS)
Project within which—like for the Canadian Rocky Mountains—anaglyphs are
used to give stereoscopic impressions (Wheate and Menounos
2012
). In this case
