VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IN PLANNING AFFAIRS 
Getting closer to geographic data, a better way! 
Mohammed Abdul Mannan, Bogdahn Juergen. 
Dept. of Geomatics, Computer Sciences and Mathematics, Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, 
Schellingstrasse 24, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany. - {abdulmannan, juergen.bogdahn } @ web.de 
KEY WORDS: City model, GIS, Planning, Programming, Web based, Visualization, Virtual Reality. 
ABSTRACT: 
Urban environmental elements and planning involve a complex data and phenomenon. It is required to have a better understanding 
of concerned geographic data to make a decision or plan for the applications like urban planning, infrastructure management, and 
visibility analysis and tourism promotion. Current practice in any public or private sector planning context at any spatial scale 
involves better visualization techniques. In many planning issues, GIS is combined with other several computer tools to enhance the 
planning process and decision-making. The rapid advancement in science and technology had opened wide options for a change and 
development of current methods and concepts. Computer data visualizations, not only help laypersons, who often have trouble in 
understanding or interpreting complex data, but they also can help experts with its various capabilities. High performance 
visualization. tools provides dynamic work sphere to combine interactive urban environmental elements with internet based 
visualizations (web 3D) and Virtual reality. This study is based on such visualizations. The main focus of the research is to display 
the geographic data comprising of spatial as well as the non-spatial data in these virtual environments. The first part of project, 
named as web 3D project enables online internet access to 3D urban models including geometry and thematic attribute data. The 
second part of project is focused on virtual reality, which let the user immerse in the data, that is you are surrounded by the 
landscape and you can walk, fly around the city. One can visualize the existing scenario in C.A.V.E or H.M.D and can test future 
natural and built environments. And also a program is developed to access the attribute information like name of building, usage etc. 
for the objects in virtual reality, which will display in runtime while navigating the scene. 
1. INTRODUCTION considered as a new information revolution and tremendous 
amounts of money and manpower have been invested in Web- 
The city is usually the centre of education, trade, industry, based commerce systems. A system is developed based on 
cultural life, government, etc. It offers a variety of existing GIS (shape file) and Virtual model (VRML model of 
opportunities, which always has attracted people from the Stuttgart city) that links up with to visualize spatial and non- 
villages. The increase in population inevitably leads to the spatial data and will help user to improve the planning process. 
increase in the both complexity of tasks that have to be planned The user walks around, in the virtual environment and can point 
and the information that has to be processed, like the research to objects in the scene and ask for information from GIS 
study area Stuttgart city in Germany. In many planning affairs, database. 
the need for 3D geo-referenced information is extremely high. 
For example: Issues related to 3D interaction between newly ^ Another domain of project is named as virtual reality (VR). 
designed elements (buildings, roads, etc.) and existing ^ Sophisticated devices or conventional equipment allow 
infrastructure, environmental impact analysis, transportation complete immersion with the model, simulating actions and 
networks, tourism and shopping information, real estate market, observing reactions similar to those in the real world. VR offers 
management and preservation of cultural sites, etc. new and exciting opportunities to visualize 3DGIS data. Users 
can walk through 3D environments; see newly planned 
For planning of such cities and maintaining public areas and buildings and experience changes in the landscape. In most 
buildings, it’s required to maintain the variety of data and cases, however, interaction with the data is limited to viewing. 
respond to the increased demand for urban information. There These visualizations have two conceptual specifics that result in 
are many deficiencies to handle and planning of cities in the insufficient means for GIS analysis. Most of them are not 
existing information systems as also identified by many authors designed to deal with semantic information and spatial analysis 
(Bodum et al 1998, Tempfli 1998). Most of the problems is hardly in focus. 
discussed refer to the representation and analysis of spatial 
objects. A program is developed using Tcl programming language 
extends Lightning VR software (Blach et al 1998) to access and 
The commonly established systems dealing with spatial display semantic information in such environment. This paper 
information were originally designed to create, edit and display shows the concept and tools used to shape this idea. Various 
small 3D graphics models, show weaknesses in the 3D aspects, which have lead to the basic set-up of a Web 3D/VR- 
visualization of large models (Zlatanova, 2000). system, are discussed in two separate sections. First, we 
describe the need, tools and methodology under each section. 
Recent developments (power processors, graphics accelerators And final conclusions were included from both the Virtual 
and standard hardware-implemented graphics libraries) have environments. 
opened up new horizons for 3D visualization, like Web 3D and 
Virtual Reality (VR). Visualization on Web electronic market is 
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