FP-WesleyWillett
From CS294-10 Visualization Fa07
Contents |
[edit] Proposal
[edit] Group Members
- Wesley Willett
[edit] Description
Basic topographic maps are useful for navigating uneven terrain. However, even though they provide elevation information, it’s often hard to visualize and it’s sometimes difficult to place a given route within the real-world environment. Hand-drawn route maps, either sketched from an angled perspective or drawn onto a photograph are often much more useful when visualizing a route and are frequently included in hiking guides. These kinds of maps generally emphasize major landmarks and show the route from an angle (and with additional depth cues) that allows the curvature of the terrain to be read more easily. Unfortunately, these are often very work-intensive to produce and, at least in the case of routes overlaid on photographs, are limited by the collection of photographs (typically these are taken from the base of a climb or from a high point adjacent to the route). It would be interesting then, to try to generate these sorts of maps automatically. Relatively high-resolution satellite imagery is now available for most of the world, along with LIDAR elevation data. Additionally, data for routes can be very accurately obtained using a portable GPS, and repositories of many routes exist on the web.
Ideally, I would imagine trying to generate printed maps of 3D terrain that optimize the viewing angle and projection to best show the desired routes as well as the geometry of the terrain they bisect.
Two particular issues are of interest to me here: 1) Identifying design principles for selecting the most appropriate viewpoint(s) for these sorts of maps. This might depend on factors such as:
- Amount of Route Occlusion
- Terrain Saliency and Complexity
- Visibility of Key Landmarks
- Appropriate Positions for Start/Finish
- Direction of Travel
- Desired Map Orientation
(In some cases it may be more useful to split a route between multiple maps or views.)
2) Identifying techniques for manipulating the underlying digital elevation models and altering the rendering style of the maps to better present routes.
[edit] Related Work
Agrawala, M., & Stolte, C. (2001). Rendering effective route maps: improving usability through generalization. Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, 241-249.
Lee, C. H., Varshney, A., & Jacobs, D. W. (2005). Mesh saliency. ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Papers, 659-666.
Patterson, T. (2001). DEM Manipulation and 3-D Terrain Visualization: Techniques Used by the US National Park Service. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 38(1), 89-101.
Premoze, S. (2002). Computer Generation of Panoramic Route Maps. University of Utah (unpublished?)
Examples
Berann, H.C. The Panoramas of H.C. Berann.
Roach, G. (1999). Colorado's Fourteeners: From Hikes to Climbs. Fulcrum Publishing.
Spring, I., & Manning, H. (2003). 100 Hikes in Washington's Glacier Peak Region: The North Cascades. Mountaineers Books.
[edit] Initial Problem Presentation
[edit] Midpoint Design Discussion
[edit] Final Deliverables
Submitted slightly after midnight on the 14th - which apparently translates to 8am in the wiki's edit history (presumably set to GMT).
