A Hybrid Decision Support System for 3D City Planning

Abstract

In recent years virtual reality based geographic information systems (VRGIS) have been employed successfully to accomplish city planning tasks. Tracking technologies and stereoscopic visualization of three-dimensional structures support the user to gain a better insight into complex datasets. Moreover, large projection-based displays have considerable potential to enable collaboration in colocated VRGIS setups, i.e., several city planners can design virtual 3D city models simultaneously. However, these systems often lack intuitive interaction concepts and therefore are mainly used as advanced visualization tools. In this paper, we present a hybrid city planning system that uses desktop-based environments as well as semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) systems to support the planning process. The objective of this approach is to enhance the design process of development plans based on similar work processes that are performed in real-world planning tasks. Our system provides an advanced desktop-based interface to edit digital geoobjects, and it supports intuitive interaction concepts for semi-immersive VR systems to arrange the resulting entities in development plans. To assure the usability and relevance of our system, city planners were closely involved in the development. In this paper both the hard- and software architecture of the entire system as well as VR related interaction metaphors and their evaluation are discussed.