Virtual Terrain Generation with MetaVR Terrain Tools for ESRI ArcGIS 9

MetaVR™ has been developing virtual terrain generation products to complement its PC image generator Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ (VRSG™) for over eight years. The next step in the evolution of these products is MetaVR's new Terrain Tools extension for ESRI ArcGIS Desktop 9. MetaVR's set of Terrain Tools enables users to turn their geospatial data into real-time 3D terrain from within their GIS software. The latest release of Terrain Tools version 1 is compatible with ESRI’s recent release of ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.

Leveraging the significant infrastructure of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology within ESRI’s industry standard ArcGIS platform, MetaVR’s Terrain Tools extension combines powerful 3D terrain building functionality with an accessible and intuitive interface. The tools can be easily understood by anyone with a general understanding of geospatial data concepts, regardless of experience with ArcGIS software. Users create a basic map in ArcMap and use Terrain Tools to generate the 3D terrain in MetaVR's geocentric Metadesic format. The resulting terrain can be rendered in real-time within VRSG. With this new product, MetaVR can focus on the terrain composition while taking advantage of the significant GIS functionality provided by the ESRI product line.

The user interface of MetaVR’s Build Selected Tiles terrain tool extension to ESRI ArcGIS, and an real-time aerial view in VRSG of the resulting 3D terrain. The 2D terrain imagery and resulting terrain is of Vermont, and the area selected is for building terrain tiles of the area around the Burlington International Airport, Burlington, VT, with Lake Champlain visible in the background. This Vermont terrain was generated in MetaVR's geocentric Metadesic (MDS) format.

MetaVR terrain formats

MetaVR VRSG supports visualization of two 3D terrain formats:

• The MDX flat-earth terrain format that has traditionally been used for ground-level simulation (for driving, convoys, dismounted troops, and so on). For these types of applications, the operational area is typically relatively small; therefore, a flat-earth terrain approximation is appropriate. Additionally, many legacy simulation systems use a flat-earth terrain representation, which means the same representation is also required by the image generator to achieve correlation.
  
• The Metadesic (MDS) terrain format is a round-earth terrain representation. The Metadesic format is ideal for aerial applications, which require vast areas of terrain. The product is currently used to build terrain for many manned and unmanned aircraft simulators. A round-earth terrain format has many benefits; most importantly, the terrain models the earth to a high degree of accuracy over its entire surface in contrast to a local approximation that is only valid over a relatively small range. This level of accuracy is vital for targeting applications and determining intervisibility.

Until now, MetaVR has offered two terrain generation products: WorldPerfect builds MDX databases (and correlated databases in other formats) and the Metadesic Compiler builds datasets of Metadesic terrain tiles. Version 1.0 of Terrain Tools supports Metadesic format terrain output. Future versions of Terrain Tools will also support MDX output, which means that with MetaVR Terrain Tools for ArcGIS, users will have a single application that can generate terrain in both of these formats.

	MetaVR's VRSG real-time rendered and wireframe 3D views of terrain tiles of the Lake Champlain, Vermont, shoreline. This scene is part of the Vermont and upstate NY virtual terrain, which was built with Terrain Tools.

Using the ArcGIS interface, coastlines can be digitized and cut out from geospecific imagery. In the example above, MetaVR Terrain Tools was used to create the terrain mesh of the high resolution representation of the Lake Champlain, VT shoreline. The terrain tiles of the shoreline seamlessly meet water tiles generated by VRSG. At runtime, VRSG Metadesic generates multi-textured, animated, normal-mapped water surfaces in the cutout regions identified as water.

Benefits of MetaVR’s new terrain tools

In addition to generating 3D terrain in Metadesic format with tools seamlessly integrated with the industry’s leading GIS platform, key benefits of MetaVR’s new Terrain Tools for ArcGIS include:

• Live compositing display of raster imagery and elevation data in a WYSIWYG interface.
• Support for any format of source data supported by ArcGIS technology.
• Advanced raster display capabilities such as pan-sharpening, custom band order, multiple re-sampling techniques, histogram stretching, contrast and brightness control, and masking.
• Ability to supply coastline vector data, creating crisp boundaries between compiled terrain and VRSG-generated water representation.
• Support for batch processing with Python scripts. Users can manage terrain generation in batch processes controlled by Python scripts, which enables distribution of processing on a different machine (that also has ArcGIS Desktop and Terrain Tools installed).
• Support for the Navy's Portable Source Initiative (PSI) standard for terrain database source data.

The MetaVR suite of Terrain Tools for ESRI ArcGIS requires any license level of ArcGIS version 9 (ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo), ESRI’s 3D Analyst Extension, and VRSG version 5.

MetaVR is a business partner of the ESRI Developer Program.

You can order the MetaVR Terrain Tools for ArcGIS directly from MetaVR.