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X3D Earth Working Group Meeting: 1-Year Progress Review

The X3D Earth Working Group held a 1-Year Progress Review meeting on 1-2 November 2007 at Schlumberger in Cambridge Massachusetts USA. Key members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which held its annual Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meeting meeting in Cambridge the following week.

Demonstation Movies

Agenda

  1. Schlumberger demonstrations, use cases, and challenges to this group for use of geospatial data
  2. X3D Earth Globes
    • Multiple implementations available
    • Design patterns and lessons learned from each
    • Performance metrics
    • Can we announce availability of initial-draft X3D Earth?
  3. X3D Geospatial Clients
    • Yumetech Xj3D
    • Bit Management Contact Geo
    • (in progress) MediaMachines Flux
    • (possibly) NASA WorldWind with an X3D loader
    • CosmoPlayer with GeoVRML, for VRML97 backwards compatibility
    • Anyone else?
  4. Data services, layers and overlays on top of the globe
    • Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) discussion
  5. Geospatial X3D demonstrations:
    • Planet 9 London
    • MBARI Monterey Bay operations
    • NPS Savage Studio scenario creation
    • SIGGRAPH chapters KML via XSLT into Geospatial X3D
    • all others welcome
  6. OGC CityGML and W3DS - Thomas Kolbe
  7. OGC 3DIM activities, goals, and collaboration points with Web3D ?Tim Case
  8. Activities, goals, and collaboration points with Web3D
    • Additional liaison efforts and candidate members
    • Web3D-OGC (and maybe W3C?) collaboration, schedule, milestones
  9. SEDRIS EDCS compatibility look-ahead
  10. Other stuff
    • Review of X3D Earth Technical Requirements from November 2006: progress report and triage for either specification, Recommended Practice, or future work
    • GeoOrigin issues and recommendations for improved space-to-face fidelity
  11. Consider press release reporting rapid one-year progress from requirements to initial delivery
  12. Planning for next working group meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil in Spring 2008
  13. MIT media lab tour and demonstrations http://www.media.mit.edu
  14. Further topics by participants

Attendees

  • Claude Baudoin, Schlumberger Knowledge Management
  • Don Brutzman, NPS, working group cochair
  • Tim Case, PB (Parsons Brinckerhoff) Consultancy, OGC 3DIM chair
  • Paul Cote, OGC BIM and CityGML
  • Nathan Crews, Landxml.org, Autodesk
  • Yechezkal Guttfreund, Draper Labs
  • Michael Horhammer, Oracle Spatial
  • Alan Hudson, Yumetech, Web3D President
  • Violeta Ivanova, MIT
  • Baris Kazar, Oracle Spatial
  • Thomas Kolbe, OGC CityGML
  • Mike McCann, MBARI, working group cochair
  • Rex Melton, Yumetech
  • Michael Moody, Schlumberger, host
  • Valery Polyakov, Research Scientist - SOA specialist, Schlumberger
  • Dick Puk, ISO convener for X3D specifications
  • Raj Singh, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
  • Rita Turkowski, Web3D Executive Director
  • Byounghyun Yoo, NPS/KAIST, Postdoctoral Research

Regrets

  • Chris Thorne, Ping Interactive, Australia
  • David Colleen, Planet9

IPR ground rules

We had Web3D members, OGC partners and a number of visitors. The X3D Earth working group operates under our Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy which requires predeclaration of IP claims prior to introducing new technology for discussion, within the safe haven of the working group. This enables a broad range of technologies to be carefully considered while working to further extend the royalty-free X3D specification.

No proprietary or private technology is covered in these minutes.

Schlumberger demonstrations, use cases, and challenges to this group for use of geospatial data

Michael Moody talked about Schlumberger's broad set of responsibilities in the oil and gas exploration industry. There are many corporate and customer needs that can benefit from this effort.

Schlumberger provided outstanding facilities for good work and were very gracious hosts. We're very grateful for their hospitality and contributions.

X3D Earth Globes

Multiple implementations are now available and being demonstrated.

  • Rez by Chris Thorne and Byounghyun Yoo
    1. Server-side tile generator improvement by Chris Thorne and Byounghyun Yoo.

      1. Server-side tile generator debugging issues with naming convention, data coordinate consistency
      2. Debugging problems related with data consistency among GeoElevatinoGrid, Image tile, X3D tile, height array and GeoGridOrigin.
      3. Tile pattern debugging
      4. Comparison the tile generation pattern of different globe tiles (Rez and JeoSpace)

    2. X3D-Earth globe implementation

      1. Earth Terrain and Bathymetry Imagery data: Color scale texture image Elevation data: 1 Minute Grid terrain and bathymetry Number of LoD: Two 7 level (0 to 6 levels quadtree) each for West and East side the globe
      2. - Blue Marble with LANSAT Imagery data: Blue Marble + LANSAT7 Elevation data: SRTM30 Plus + NED (30m) Number of LoD: Two 7 level (0 to 6 levels quadtree) each for West and East side the globe, and an additional 7 levels for San Francisco Bay area

    3. X3D-Earth server

      • Public webpage for the X3D-Earth globes under development is accessible at x3d-earth.nps.edu.
  • Yumetech's JeoSpace globe generator
    • Rex Melton demonstrated the X3D Earth globe that was generated with Yumetech's JeoSpace tile generator.

    • Please click the image to enlarge.

  • Bathymetry and terrain generation using SRI tools, Mike McCann
    • X3D Geospatial Component overview slides
    • Mike McCann talked about X3D Earth GeoSpatial nodes and the uniqueness of X3D Earth and demonstrated a MBARI intranet application with bathymetry and terrain generation using SRI tools.

  • Digital Nautical Chart Demos, Doug Maxwell
    • Migrated NUWC's DNC to X3D tile generation software to geo-Elevation grids
    • Provided Antarctic to Arctic coastline models for the Americas in the "cyan marble"
    • Discussed design patterns for a geo viewer and need for dealing with vertical exaggeration
    • Provided femo of 4-minute, 1-minute, and 15-second resolution models derived from unclassified Digital Nautical Chart (DNC) coastal data using the X3D GeoElevation pattern
  • Multiple implementations available
  • Design patterns and lessons learned from each
  • Performance metrics
  • Can we announce availability of initial-draft X3D Earth?

X3D Geospatial Clients

We examined the status of various X3D client applications and plugins to determine which sufficiently supported the X3D Graphics Geospatial Component and X3D Earth.

  • Yumetech Xj3D.
  • Bit Management Contact Geo. Contact has partial support for X3D Geospatial component.
  • CosmoPlayer with GeoVRML, for VRML97 backwards compatibility
  • NASA WorldWind with an X3D loader. Rick Goldberg of aniviza.com is working on integrating the Xj3D client as a layer for loading X3D scenes in NASA WorldWind. Prelinary snapshot provided.
  • Media Machines Flux. Media Machines has decided that it will not include X3D Geospatial support in Flux.
  • Anyone else? No others yet known, but production plans and implementation queries remain welcome.

Data services, layers and overlays on top of the globe

Alan Hudson and Rex Melton demonstrated several OGC features in combination with Xj3D rendering of X3D Earth datasets.

  • Web Map Service (WMS)
  • Web Feature Service (WFS).

Discussion

Geospatial X3D demonstrations and current work

  • Planet 9 London
    Video clips:

    Please click each image to download video clips.
  • MBARI Monterey Bay operations

    Please click the image to enlarge.
  • NPS Savage Studio scenario creation

  • SIGGRAPH chapters KML via XSLT into Geospatial X3D

OGC CityGML and W3DS - Thomas Kolbe

Web 3D Service and CityGML Slides

Thomas Kolbe presented OGC's CityGML as a urban information model and exchange format, and Web 3D service as a way to integrate 3D visualizations from diffrent sources.

CityGML

CityGML should be considered a rich source format from which X3D can easily be derived. Its main purpose is to transport geoinformation (i.e. semantic geo-objects with spatial and non-spatial properties and their interrelationships) between different datastores. CityGML is not optimized with respect to efficient visualization. However, the semantic information given by the explicit assignment of CityGML objects to thematic classes like buildings, doors, plants, and the provision of thematic attributes can be exploited to filter objects and to create X3D shapes, appearance properties and materials accordingly.

A new appearance model was introduced within the recent version of CityGML. Appearances capture characteristics of surfaces as they appear to specific sensors like RGB or IR cameras, but may also model other surface sensor readings. Each surface is allowed to have assigned multiple appearances (e.g. one RGB texture for a building facade recorded in summer and another one from winter). All appearances can be assigned to themes like e.g. the "winter RGB theme" or the "spring IR theme".

These themes are useful if one wants to visualize a 3D scene differently for winter or summer time. Switching of themes in a visualization client would mean a replacement of the surface materials and textures. By using themes, also multi-texturing can be supportd by CityGML. One example could be the precomputation of shadow maps for each surface which would all be assigned to a theme that might be called "shadows". The shadow textures could then be mapped together with the RGB texture images to the corresponding surfaces.

Also the way how raster files (i.e. texture images) are mapped to the 3D surfaces was extended. Besides the provision of texture coordinates non-vertical surfaces my simply refer to a georeferenced texture. It is up to the viewer then to compute the proper extent of the texture from the 2D footprint of the corresponding 3D surface. Another easy way to assign textures uses a parametric approach: if the camera orientation and focal length of pictures are known, 3D surfaces can simply refer to the picture in which their surface is best observed. The rest can be computed from these information by a viewer (or a portrayal service like the W3DS).

Web3D Service (W3DS) draft proposal overview

Web3D Service (W3DS) Discussion Paper

The W3DS is a specific web service for the portraying of 3D geoinformation. It delivers 3D scene graphs as a result from the visualization of 3D geodata, CAD, or BIM data. X3D and its predecessor VRML are most suitable output formats.

The main purpose of the W3DS is to provide a standardized interface for requesting a 3D visualization from different platforms and vendors. It can be implemented just as an web service API to existing X3D / VRML export functionalities of (possibly) proprietary systems. As the W3DS is an OGC web service it will work well together with other OGC web services like catalogue (CS-W), security (WSS), and e-commerce (WPOS) services.

The W3DS is also intended to establish a natural link between (City)GML and 3D graphics formats (X3D, but also KML/COLLADA). GML data can be retrieved from a Web Feature Service, raster data from a Web Coverage Service and then be forwarded to a W3DS which then derives X3D from it. This includes coordinate transformations like swapping from typically left-handed world coordinate systems to right-handed coordinate systems as used in Computer Graphics and the translation of large coordinates to a new origin with local coordinates (possibly using X3D Earth's Geolocation node).

As an option for future extension of the W3DS specification users might become enabled to control the styling (which and how geoobjects are mapped to appearance parameters and materials) using the OGC Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD).

Visual contents within W3DS are structured in object layers, comparable to the notion of layers within Web Map Services. With each request all objects that lie in a specific spatial extent (bounding volume) and which belong to the selected layers are portrayed and packaged into one scenegraph.

On the client side an X3D web browser plug-in or also a 3D visualization software program can be used to display and navigate the generated 3D scene. Within the client it should be generally possible to merge the scenegraphs from different W3DS allowing for a transient integration of 3D geovisualizations from different sources. For example, the portrayed DTM (e.g. an X3D height field) may be fetched from one W3DS and the X3D representation of buildings and city furniture from a second W3DS. Earth Browsers like Worldwind and Google Earth may be also used as clients for a W3DS.

Since the W3DS specification document is an OGC discussion paper, significant modifications and extensions can still be suggested and included. I think it will be worth thinking about making it a joint specification of OGC and Web3D (Consider this as a materialization of the MoU between both organizations).

OGC 3D Information Management Group (3DIM) - Tim Case

Tim Case introduced OGC 3D Information Management Group (3DIM)

LandXML.org project - Nathan Crews

LandXML.org is a worldwide grassroots style open organization that was initiated in December 1999 by former EAS-E initiative members and Autodesk. We started with 26 members including: Autodesk, Nebraska Department of Roads, Florida DOT, Intergraph, CAICE Software, Bentley Systems. As of November 2007, LandXML.org has expanded around the world to 41 countries and grown to 673 representatives from 582 member companies, universities and government agencies. No cost or specific obligations to join. There are no IP issues, no copyrights trademarks or patents. We consist of more end users than government agencies and software vendors.

LandXML.org is very pleased to be working with Web3DS.org to provide 3D visualization of our complex design data. We are even more pleased to be working in conjunction with our colleagues at OGC to contribute our pre-built design and as-built data to the ever evolving collection of GeoWeb data.

Activities, goals, and collaboration points with Web3D

  • Additional liaison efforts and candidate members
  • Web3D-OGC (and maybe W3C?) collaboration, schedule, milestones. December 17 teleconference. Mike McCann attend meeting?
  • Mike McCann: meeting schedules
  • Chris Nicholas: requesting funding for demonstration testbeds

SEDRIS EDCS compatibility look-ahead

Dick Puk provided several updates regarding the X3D Geospatial Component, SEDRIS and the EDCS.

Ongoing work

  • Used material nodes rather than unlit textures (as Rez and Yumetech have done).
  • Vertical Y-axis exaggeration. People often want vertical exaggeration but inconsistency prevents composability. So it is probably necessary to require that server-side content have unit scaling (no exaggeration) along the vertical. Users need to know, and may wish to control, currently displayed vertical exaggeration. This likely should be a recommended practice. Some applications might deliberately hide this information from users, which is not a good idea but might not be forbiddable. Changing the yScale field simultaneously among hundreds and thousands of GeoElevationGrid files is not practical for ROUTEd events among all the Inline nodes via IMPORT/EXPORT. So this is a likely candidate spec addition as we zoom back to consider scene graph patterns, not just individual node parameters.

Other stuff

  • Review of X3D Earth Technical Requirements from November 2006: progress report and triage for either specification, Recommended Practice, or future work
  • GeoOrigin issues and recommendations for improved space-to-face fidelity
  • Compressed binary encoding for X3D
  • FAQ pages GML, KML, X3DE, etc.
  • example code/content showing each OGC specification utilized

Consider press release reporting rapid one-year progress from requirements to initial delivery

We decided to produce a press release from the minutes.

Planning for next working group meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil in Spring 2008

MIT media lab tour and demonstrations http://www.media.mit.edu

We had a great tour and meeting. Thank you Michael for being such a great host.

Updated 22 January 2008

How to join the X3D Earth Working Group

Any Web3D Consortium Member can join the X3D Earth Working Group. We offer student, professional, academic and company level memberships.

Consortium members can simply go to the Consortium Member Login area of the website to sign-up to join this working group.

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