Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive procedural 3D modelling solution called Virtual City Maker, which relies on scripting algorithms for automatic generation of photorealistic virtual urban content. This solution uses the combination of aerial images, terrestrial photographic input and 2D ground maps in conjunction with a user-friendly customized interface allowing for automatically and interactively generating accurate georeferenced textured 3D virtual city content from this information, specially optimized for use with mobile devices and navigation. The paper also discusses the development and introduction of an innovative mobile virtual reality visualisation engine operating on a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), called Virtual Navigator, which supports the import of 3D visualization file formats and also includes a front-end user-centered interface for fully immersive virtual 3D navigation. Finally, experiments with the resulting models, the engine and a number of human subjects have been conducted in order to gain insight on the issues of efficient modelling for mobile navigation but also assess some of the usability issues of the interface.