Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2
Google's 3D raster
mobile mapping source:
transforming it to a 2D pixel representation on screen, two main approaches to
mobile mapping (including 3D mapping) can be identified—rendering data on the
server side and rendering data on the client device. The latter has been made pos-
sible by the increasing specification of mobile devices.
Server Side Rendering
For server-side rendering, data processing and render-
ing takes place on a powerful computer (with performance enhanced by clustering
servers and using graphics accelerators) (Lamberti et al.
2003
) and only the results
are sent to the mobile client (Brachtl et al.
2001
; Nadalutti et al.
2006
), most com-
monly as an image or “raster”. As with 2D mapping, a number of providers have
generated 3D raster maps for use on mobile devices (see Fig.
2
which shows 3D
mapping available from Google).
Client Side Rendering
When considering architectures where the rendering
is carried out on the mobile client, the aim is to keep the graphics as simple as
