Achieving 3D Thematic Cartography through Open Source: Synergy of QGIS and Three.js
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The 3D visualization of geospatial data is nowadays used in many areas and to various issues, which is conditioned by expansion of hardware devices and software tools enabling 3D geovisualization. 3D geovisualizations include broad spectrum of instances from photorealistic visualizations to abstract depictions of attribute data. Exploration of applicability or possible modifications of traditional cartographic visualization methods in 3D is therefore progressive topic. This field of study was in previous years investigated relatively rarely except of, for example, Bandrova (2001), Petrovič (2003), Dollner (2007), Pegg (2009) or Hajek et al. (2016). Most of these studies focus on cartographic methods for visualization of qualitative data, especially on design and application of 3D point symbols or textures on surfaces and objects. From this reason, we want to concentrate on visualization methods for quantitative data in this paper. For creations of 3D visualizations in scope of this paper we have choose QGIS 2.12 and Qgis2three.js plug-in. We tested creation of 3D dot map, statistical surface, prism man and graduated 3D symbols in QGIS and Three.js. Advantages and limits of these technologies are discussed. Besides technical aspect we discussed also usability of created 3D visualizations and aspects of their effective and efficient design (e.g. utilization of annotations, creation of legend). Interactive functions which can improve the usability of these visualizations were described as well (implementation of cutting planes or using of transparency). Suitable extensions and possible future applications of 3D variants of visualization methods are suggested in the conclusion. |
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