2004 UC Proceedings Abstract

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Landscape Visualization: Progress and Prospects
Track: Modeling
Author(s): Stephen Ervin

Landscape Visualization, once the exclusive domain of 'GIS'-style software, has entered maintream efforts in professional fields such as architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering and Hollywood movie-efects, and is now enabled by many CAD and animation/rendering systems, as well as GIS and remote-sensing software. The complexities of the essential elements of landscape models -- notably landform, water, vegetation and atmospheric effects, and their curved, fuzzy, fractal, irregular surfaces and dynamic and ephemeral systems -- present special challenges to computer graphics and spatial information systems. This paper reviews the recent history of landscape visualization technologies and software techniques, critiques the current state-of-the-art in GIS and related software, including ArcGIS 3D Analyst, and identifies a number of interesting current and future challenges and research opportunities.

Stephen Ervin
Harvard Design School
information technology
48 quincy st
Cambridge , MA 02138
US
Phone: 617 495 2682
Fax: 617 495 5866
E-mail: servin@gsd.harvard.edu