Project

Foreword | Research | Results | References

Technological Background

The V-City project builds on the results of major European initiatives involving the consortium members:

  • The VirtualGeo system: VirtualGeo is one of the most-effective planet viewers. It has been developped in the frame of the European Virtual Planet (2001-2004) and CRIMSON (2005-2007) projects by CS with the support of CNR and CRS4. These projects have produced produced major advances in the field of massive geographic environment and large scale urban environments 3D visualisation. VirtualGeo is today sold by CS to professionals such as civil security organisations, aerospace industrials, or land planning and mapping agencies. http://www.virtual-geo.com/

  • The CityEngine system: this system is a revolutionary tool for the efficient creation of digital architecture. It has been created by PI and KUL members and improved in the EPOCH FP6 Network of Excellence. Recent research results published by these partners at SIGGRAPH 06, 07, and 08 enable today the launch of the V-City project. http://www.procedural.com/

  • BLOM’s exclusive geo-referenced multi angle aerial imagery technology and digital library (tens millions of aerial images), opens radically new perspectives in terms of reconstruction of real urban environments. http://www.blomasa.com/

Scientific & Technological Objectives

The V-City consortium provides the world-class and complementary competencies required to tackle the following scientific and technological challenges:

  1. Processing of a new generation of geo-referenced images: multi-angle oblique pictures captured from the ground, with airborne systems operated by the consortium, or satellites. Filtering, perspective correction, tone homogenisation, and correlation of these images with other multi-source and multi-format geo-referenced data (LIDAR point clouds, cadastral data, DEMs…), extraction of building shapes and facade textures.

  1. Automatic extraction of the topological and semantic information about the constructions (floors, doors, windows, style, shape of roof...). This work will be based on the latest research results published by the consortium [MZW07] at SIGGRAPH 07.

  1. Reconstructing complete cities using procedural rules derived from the extracted topological and semantic information. This work will extend the recent research results published by the consortium at SIGGRAPH 08 and 06 [CEW08, MWH06]
  2. Implementing techniques for optimising, storing and visualising online large scale geographic, architectural and environmental datasets in real-time, from global scale to building interiors. These techniques will also support non Euclidian information, such as textual information, topological and semantic tags, or exogenous data enriching the environment. This will extend the research results presented by the consortium at SIGGRAPH  07 [KM07].

  1. Implementing new multi-user interaction metaphors to intuitively browse, manipulate and interact with the displayed 3D urban datasets. This encompasses the research and development of a new kind of device, the interactive 3D map table, featuring a multi-touch multi-user table used to display and interact with the 3D reconstructed city.
  2. Integrating these modules in a robust, seamless, distributed and time-critical framework that will serve as a backbone for all types of online urban activities.
  3. Providing a V-City Software Developer Kit enabling third-parties to extend the system by implementing additional modules or gateways to other services.
  4. Making the whole system run on entry level PCs or laptops, with the appropriate graphic board and hard drive.
  5. Validating the impact of the proposed system on real scale end-user scenarios