Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, 2012 // View article

Analyzing 3D Complex Urban Environments Using a Unified Visibility Algorithm

Authors:
Oren Gal
Yerach Doytsher

Keywords: Visibility; 3D; Urban environment; Spatial analysis; Mass modeling

Abstract:
This paper presents a unique solution for the visibility problem in 3D urban environments. We shall introduce a visibility algorithm for a 3D urban environment, based on an analytic solution for basic building structures. A building structure is presented as a continuous parameterization approximating of the building’s corners. The algorithm quickly generates the visible surfaces' boundary of a single building. Using simple geometric operations of projections and intersections between visible pyramid volumes, hidden surfaces between buildings are rapidly computed. Furthermore, extended visibility analysis for complex urban environments, consisting of mass modeling shapes, is presented. Mass modeling consists of basic shape vocabulary with a box as the basic structure. Using boxes as simple mass model shapes, one can generate complex urban building blocks such as L, H, U, and T shapes. The visibility analysis is based on concatenating the analytic solution for the basic single box building structure. The algorithm, demonstrated with a schematic structure of an urban environment and compared to the Line of Sight (LOS) method, demonstrates the computation time efficiency. Real urban environment approximated to the 3D basic shape vocabulary model demonstrates our approach.

Pages: 401 to 413

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628