VPLANET: The Virtual Planet

Details
Funded by: EU Fifth Framework Program	Reference: IST-2000-28095
Start: 2001-09-01	Duration: 36 months
Partners
Coordinator: CS SI	France
Contractor: CRS4	Italy
Contractor: CNES	France
Contractor: CNR	Italy
Contractor: DLR	Germany
Contractor: IGN	France

Abstract

The Virtual Planet project aims at developing tools that will enable real-time 3D exploration of large scale phototextured terrain datasets acquired with new generation remote sensing technology.

Objectives

The project will tackle the following technological challenges: rapid preparation of terrain databases from multiple sources; dynamic loading of massive high-resolution terrain databases; 3D real-time rendering of geographical databases; interoperation with existing GIS software; software extensibility based on an open architecture. CRS4 is the partner in charge of the study and development of multi-resolution terrain rendering components.

Achievements

CRS4 and ISTI/CNR have proposed a new technique, called Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes (BDAM), based on a paired tree structure: a tiled quadtree for texture data and a pair of bintrees of small triangular patches for the geometry. Both preprocessing and rendering exploit out-of-core techniques and fully harnesses the power of current graphics hardware. Recent benchmarks indicate that the BDAM technique outperforms state-of-the-art techniques based on hierarchies of right triangles, currently regarded as the most efficient for continuous level-of-detail rendering.

Publications

	[1] Enrico Gobbetti and Fabio Marton. Layered Point Clouds. In Marc Alexa, Markus Gross, Hanspeter Pfister, and Szymon Rusinkiewicz, editors, Eurographics Symposium on Point Based Graphics. Pages 113-120, 227. Eurographics Association, June 2004. Conference held in Zurich, Switzerland, June 2-5, 2004.
	[2] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Adaptive TetraPuzzles - Efficient Out-of-core Construction and Visualization of Gigantic Polygonal Models. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 23(3): 796-803, August 2004. Proc. SIGGRAPH 2004.
	[3] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Interactive Out-of-core Visualization of Very Large Landscapes on Commodity Graphics Platforms. In Olivier Balet, Gérard Subsol, and Patrice Torguet, editors, International Conference on Virtual Storytelling. Volume 2897 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Pages 21-29, Springer Verlag, New York, NY, USA, November 2003. Proc. Second International Conference, ICVS 2003, Toulouse, France, November 20-21, 2003, Proceedings.
	[4] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Batching Meshes for High Performance Terrain Visualization. In Proceedings Eurographics Italy, September 2003. CDROM Proceedings.
	[5] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Planet-Sized Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes (P-BDAM). In Proceedings IEEE Visualization. Pages 147-155. IEEE Computer Society Press, October 2003.
	[6] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. BDAM - Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for High Performance Terrain Visualization. Computer Graphics Forum, 22(3): 505-514, September 2003. Proc. Eurographics 2003 - Second Best Paper Award.

Technical Reports

	[1] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Time critical components - final release. Deliverable D5.2.2. EU Project V-PLANET (IST-2000-28095), June 2004.
	[2] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Time critical components - first release. Deliverable D5.2.1. EU Project V-PLANET (IST-2000-28095), June 2003.
	[3] Enrico Gobbetti. Multiresolution Graphics on Commodity Graphics Platforms. Tutorial notes, Eurographics Italy. Conference held in Milan, Italy, September 25-26, CDROM Proceedings, September 2003.
	[4] Enrico Gobbetti, Riccardo Scateni, and Roberto Scopigno. State of the Art Report on Technology for the efficient management of geo-spatial 3D data on commodity and distributed platform. Deliverable D2.2. EU Project V-PLANET (IST-2000-28095), March 2002.
	[5] Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno. Technical Report on time critical components. Deliverable D4.2. Deliverable D5.1, EU Project V-PLANET (IST-2000-28095), November 2002.

Related videos

	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for Terrain Rendering - Large Scale Stereoscopic Display Demostration: flight over Mars CRS4 Video n. 123 - Date: 11/2004
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for Terrain Rendering - City Scale Enhanced Display Demostration: flight over Nice, France CRS4 Video n. 122 - Date: 11/2004
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Efficient Visualization of Large Scale Models on Commodity Graphics Platforms CRS4 Video n. 118 - Date: 01/2004 - Duration: 00:07:50
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for Terrain Rendering - Region Scale Demostration: flight over Germany CRS4 Video n. 116 - Date: 11/2003
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for Terrain Rendering - City Scale Demostration: flight over Nice, France CRS4 Video n. 111 - Date: 06/2003
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for Terrain Rendering - Planet Scale Demostration: flight over Mars CRS4 Video n. 110 - Date: 06/2003
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno P-BDAM: Planet Sized Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes CRS4 Video n. 108 - Date: 03/2003 Presented at the IEEE Visualization 2003 Conference. Conference held in Seattle, WA, USA, October 19-24, 2003.
	Paolo Cignoni, Fabio Ganovelli, Enrico Gobbetti, Fabio Marton, Federico Ponchio, and Roberto Scopigno BDAM - Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes for High Performance Terrain Visualization CRS4 Video n. 106 - Date: 01/2003 Presented at the Eurographics 2003 Conference.