Geographical information in Virtual Environments

We studied the combination of a Geographical Information System (GIS) and a Virtual Environment (VE). The goal was to establish a bi-directional link between a GIS and a virtual environment. The first step was to combine three types of data to build the 3D world and store it into the GIS: a digital elevation map, a photo image and GIS data of a particular area of the city of Rotterdam. The GIS and virtual environment are communicating through an intermediate layer. Based on the position of the user in the virtual environment and the type of interaction, this layer constructs a query that is send to the GIS. In return, the GIS sends the results of the query back to this layer, that transforms it into correct virtual primitives for presentation to the user. The virtual environment presents changes in the GIS by polling the database frequently. This allows multiple users interacting with the same GIS at the same time, seeing the changes other users make. Several widgets in the virtual environment enable the user to interact with the GIS. It can be concluded that interacting with GIS-data in a virtual environment enhances the understanding of the data.