Hyper-Elevation Modeling of Terrain, Topography, and Urban Environments

Image Generation systems today currently can not easily represent Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with unique but important topographical features such as tunnels, overhangs, multi-level highways, etc. These types of features must be hand-crafted in an off-line process with the final static implementation loaded at run-time. All abstract information defining the feature as well as scalability is lost with this approach. In this SBIR, we propose a new approach where the abstraction of this feature data is preserved by creating the scene directly from the abstraction data itself. We will load this topographical feature source data during run-time along with the other source data directly to the scene. This underlying scene will be updated to allow dynamic interaction with these features during a training simulation exercise. We will use an XML-based approach to assemble various types of feature data that is loaded upon at run-time. This XML-based approach will be extended to support the existing military database re-use initiatives, such as NPSI, MSB, CDB and SE Core. This approach allows topographical feature source data to be changed and then re-visualized with no intermediate processing steps.