Digital Mapping Laboratory
Carnegie Mellon University
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``Toward automatic compilation of terrain skins from standard products.''
(PDF, 0.758 Mb;
PostScript, 1.783 Mb) Michael Polis, Stephen Gifford and David McKeown., Technical Report CMU-CS-97-117, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, March 1977. [color] |
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The automated construction of integrated terrain skins directly from
cartographic source data is a significant component toward the concept
of rapid construction of synthetic environments. While fully
automated terrain database generation has not yet been realized, some
significant steps have been demonstrated. During early 1996, a 40km × 40km integrated terrain skin of Camp Pendleton was generated to support and visualize SAF exercises. The Camp Pendleton exercise database was constructed using a variety of automated, semi-automated, and manual methods. Terrain was modeled with an integrated Triangular Irregular Network (iTIN) that included bathymetry as well as terrain elevation data from six sources. Built-up areas and areas of high fidelity interest were accommodated as relaxed polygon budget constraints for the iTIN. Certain ground based features were integrated into the exercise terrain skin. They included drivable roads, simple bridges, lakes and rivers, underwater breaklines, an ocean surface, and detailed cliff structure along the Pacific coast. In this paper we will discuss the process by which the terrain skin for the Camp Pendleton exercise database was developed, the level of automation achieved in this project, problems encountered during the course of construction, and the degree to which standard mapping products could be directly utilized. |
| Note: This paper was presented at the 15th Workshop on the Interoperability of Distributed Interactive Simulation, 16-20 September 1996 Orlando, Florida. It is a modified version of paper DIS96-15-109 available on CD-ROM from the Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida. |
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