Remote Interactive Walkthrough of City Models Using Procedural Geometry
Résumé
This report presents a new navigation system built upon our client-server framework named Magellan. With this system one can navigate through a city model represented with procedural models transmitted to clients over a network. The geometry of these models is generated on the fly and in real time at the client side. These procedural models are described using an enhanced and open version of the L-system language we have developed. The navigation system relies on different kinds of preprocessing such as space subdivision, visibility computation as well as a method for computing some parameters used to efficiently select the appropriate level of detail of objects. The two last preprocessings are automatically performed by the graphics card connected to the used computer. We also show how to build and compress the different files used to represent the database (corresponding to a city model) once this preprocessing has been effected. Methods for prefetching, anticipating and caching during remote navigation are also presented. Finally, we show how the procedural models, the space subdivision and the visibility information data are encoded into VRML97 files.