The Key Technologies and Solutions to 3D Digital City Visualization
Kevin J.L. Chen, David X.F. Jiang
Supresoft Inc. (Beijing), P.R.China.
Jlchen@supresoft.com.cn
Davidjiang@supresoft.com.cn
ABSTRACT
The technologies for 3D Digital City Construction is becoming increasingly popular in recent years. Supresoft
automatic technologies on 3D Digital City Construction facilitate fast 3D Digital City Construction in a
cost-effective way. This paper firstly analyzed the characteristic and application of digital aerial photo and review
the key technologies utilized for DEM generation, DOM (Digital Orthoimage) production, 3D City Model fast
construction, and online 3D fast visualization. Secondly it introduced one of the critical integrated technologies on
3D Digital City construction - automatic fast building facade texture acquisition and processing. Finally, detail of
Supresoft total solution on implantation of Digital City is introduced.
INTRODUCTION
“3D Digital City Model” is not only a hot topic in
academic research [Debeve, et al., 1996; Cipolla, et al,
1999], but also plays an increasingly important role in
urban development and management, especially in
city planning, construction and risk assessment. The
implementation of 3D Digital City Model requires the
combination of digital photogrammetry and 3D virtual
reality technologies. This paper discusses the
technologies developed by SUPRESOFT for 3D
Digital City Model construction.
2. 3D CITY MODEL CONSTRUCTIONS
The 3D virtual reality solution includes 3D Digital
City Model construction and 3D visualization The
model is constructed based on the true horizontal and
vertical geo-coordinate of the city features, such as
building, road, hills, etc. Generally, two steps are
needed to construction the model: data acquisition and
model set up.
Digital photogrammetry system developed from
analogue photogrammetry system and analytical
photogrammetry system is the most efficient way for
acquiring data from terrain and building in three
dimensions. The computer automatically does a
considerable amount of man labor, such as image
orientation, image matching, and DEM extraction.
However, in practical applications, building boundary
can only be measured manually in digital
photogrammetry system. Even though many
algorithms have been developed for building
extraction from aerial imagery or airborne laser
scanning altimetry data (Alharthy, 2004; Oda, 2004),
the results are not yet satisfied due to low detection
accuracy. (Schenk, 2000).
In recent years, satellite imageries acquired from
SPOT5, QuickBird, and IKONOS and the digital
aerial photography taken by DMC, VEXCEL is taking
place of film-based photos. The digital aerial photo
gains popularity because of its fast image
development, high resolution and non-loss for data
copy. In the image processing of aerial photo, GCP
and stereo pairs are needed to generate DEM model or
ortho-rectification. For satellite image processing the
parameters of rcp are applied for exterior orientation.
The area is usually overlapped by a pair of
stereoscopic images in film based photogrammetry or
satellite imagery. However in digital aerial
photogrammetry the area is overlapped by more than
one pair of stereoscopic images. Therefore some
digital photogrammetry systems take advantages of
multi-overlapped aerial photo for aerial triangulation.
This innovative technology improves the accuracy of
the output results.
The geospatial information such as DEM, DOM and
DLG generated by photogrammetric technologies has
speed up the process of 3D city model construction.
Technology developed by SUPRESOFT is able to
automatically generate 3D building polygon model
provided sufficient geo-coordinate parameters, to
acquire building texture quickly using digital video
camera and render the texture onto the polygon
models. The typical output of 3D digital city model
consists of terrain represented by overlapping digital
ortho-image (DOM) with digital elevation model
(DEM), and the buildings with true texture on the
terrain, showed in figure 1.

Fig.1 (a) building without texture

Fig.1 (b) building with texture
Fig.1 3D model overlay on DEM
The 3D city model is geo-referenced. Therefore, it is
possible to perform measurement in the 3D Model
with acceptable accuracy. It is very useful for city
planning purposes. The city planner is able to design
the target area taking account rich information from
the nearby region. Fig.2 is building height and
silhouette analysis of a region in Shanghai city, China.

Fig.2 Building height and silhouette analysis of a
Region in Shanghai City, China
3. BUILDING FAÇADE TAXTURE
ACQUISITIONS
Building texture is indispensable in the city scenes
visualization. The traditional technique is to acquire
the building texture by hand-held digital camera. And
paste it onto the building facade manually. This
process used to be one of the most labor-intensive
tasks. SUPRESOFT technology offers an alternative
way to acquire building façade texture with digital
video camera. It reduces a considerable amount of
time in data acquisition compare with digital
photography, while the rich information of texture is
preserved in the video frame.
Correction of the lens and geometry distortion is
required for the digital video records:
a. Camera calibration to eliminate lens distortion
b. Removal of occlusion of tree
Two criteria are adopted to detect the vegetation
occlusion. The first is using the color similarity of
trees. Hue value in the range of 80-200 is counted as
vegetation pixels. The second one calculates the
density of lines with regular orientation in a

Fig.3 Occlusion Removal Result (Zhang, et al., 2004)
predefined grid. The grid of low-density value are
consider as vegetation region because the vegetation
has irregular lines. [Zhang, et al., 2004]
c. Building façade texture is ortho-rectified by
calibrating DC angular parameters. Then they are
mosaic by selecting mosaic point determined by
correlation coefficient and geometric constraint.
[Zhang, et al., 2004] Finally Tone adjustment is
applied using algorithm of maximum intensity. The
building texture is rendered onto the building model
providing a realistic view. One example is shown in
Fig4.
The image mosaic and tone adjustment is
implemented with ImageXuit RS technologies
developed by SUPRESOFT. It is specialized for
remote sensing image processing with accurate and
efficient algorithm, and it takes a leading position in
the industry.
4. VISUALIZATION OF 3D CITY
The output of Digital City Model usually has a data
capacity of Giga bytes. Therefore data compression
technique is essential to allow fast roaming and
management of the data in a medium performance PC
or through the Internet. 3D Browser developed by
SUPRESOFT is able to tackle this challenge. It is
implemented by using multilevel texture swap,
multi-level geometric model and TILE (Data
Management Tile).
The roaming of 3D scenes through the web is
implemented by video streaming technologies, scenes
real time reconstruction and lossless compression. The
feature is characterized as below:

Fig.4 (a) real scene

Fig.4 (b) building models
Fig.4 an example of building model
a. The system adopts symmetric compression method
the compression ratio can be as high as 20:1.
b. Scenes roaming based on LOD (level of detail)
technology and real time model reconstruction. The
graph can be displayed from raw to detail, avoiding
the long time buffering.
c. The data transfer based on streaming technologies
together with multi-thread download technology and
encryption algorithm to enable a fast and secure
communication between client and server.
d. The data access of Web3D utilized B/S three level
system. It doesn’t require high performance hardware
configuration, allowing user with different band-wide
to view the quality-comprised scenes in real time.
e. Users are predefined to have different level of data
access permission.
f. This 3D roaming and data management
functionalities are encapsulated as ArcMap objects,
which can be easily embedded into the other GIS
systems.
Fig.5 is an example of 3D roaming and data
management.

Fig. 5 an example of 3D roaming and management
system developed by SUPRESOFT used in
Tsinghua University for land and construction
management