Processing and Rendering Massive 3D Geospatial Environments using WebGL – The examples of OpenWebGlobe and SmartMobileMapping

Generating and visualizing rich and interactive (geospatial) 3D contents over the World Wide Web (WWW) using state of the art web technologies such as WebGL as a native component of modern web browsers is a continuously growing approach to modern geospatial data exploitation. In this paper we are introducing OpenWebGlobe and 3DCityTV as two showcase applications to demonstrate the capabilities for exploiting massive 3d geospatial environments with current web technologies without the extensive use of third-party technologies such as browser plugins or extensions. Real time rendering of massive 3d virtual worlds using WebGL as well as the parallel processing and storage within common cloud computing services of large scale datasets will be discussed. Using an imaged-based approach to 3d modeling on vast stereo-vision based mobile mapping data will be introduced using an entirely web based 3d exploitation solution.