Inexpensive Reconstruction and Rendering of Realistic Roadside Landscapes

Abstract

In this paper, we present an inexpensive approach to create highly detailed reconstructions of the landscape surrounding a road. Our method is based on a space-efficient semi-procedural representation of the terrain and vegetation supporting high-quality real-time rendering not only for aerial views but also at road level. We can integrate photographs along selected road stretches. We merge the point clouds extracted from these photographs with a low-resolution digital terrain model through a novel algorithm which is robust against noise and missing data. We pre-compute plausible locations for trees through an algorithm which takes into account perceptual cues. At runtime we render the reconstructed terrain along with plants generated procedurally according to pre-computed parameters. Our rendering algorithm ensures visual consistency with aerial imagery and thus it can be integrated seamlessly with current virtual globes.In this paper, we present an inexpensive approach to create highly detailed reconstructions of the landscape surrounding a road. Our method is based on a space-efficient semi-procedural representation of the terrain and vegetation supporting high-quality real-time rendering not only for aerial views but also at road level. We use a vehicle-mounted camera to capture a collection of photographs along selected road stretches. We integrate the point clouds extracted from these photographs with a low-resolution digital terrain model through a novel algorithm which is robust against noise and missing data. We pre-compute plausible locations for trees through an algorithm which takes into account perceptual cues.