Visualization of 3D city models on mobile devices

Abstract

3D city models are increasingly being used as a tool for different applications related with urban management and planning. Current developments show the visualization of these models in desktop applications. The visualization of 3D city models in mobile devices is a great technological challenge because of the size of these models and the limited capabilities of mobile devices. In this paper we introduce a new approach for visualization of 3D city models on mobile devices without installing any specific application or plugin. To achieve this we use CityGML as a data model and visualize the geometry of CityGML in mobile devices through a web browser without plugin combining following technologies and standards: our own implementation of the W3DS web service; X3D, which is a 3D representation standard and X3DOM, which is a framework that allows to visualize X3D files in a web browser without using plugin.