Image-Based Modeling of Urban Buildings Using Aerial Photographs and Digital Maps

A VR (virtual reality) simulator which is used for helicopter simulations requires a virtual environment of real world urban areas. However, real urban environments are continuously changing. It is necessary to develop a modeling method that makes direct use of GIS (geographical information system) data which is updated periodically. A flight simulation needs to visualize not only buildings in the near distance but also a large number of buildings in the far distance. We propose a method for modeling urban environments from aerial images and digital maps with relatively little manual work. An image-based method is applied to the urban modeling that considers the characteristics of Korean cities. Buildings in the distance can be presented without creating a large number of polygons. The proposed method consists of a pre-processing stage that prepares the model from the GIS data and a modeling stage that creates the virtual urban environment. The virtual urban environment utilizes the height map of buildings.