Under the hood of GeoVRML 1.0

Abstract

GeoVRML 1.0 provides geoscientists with a rich suite of enabling capabilities that cannot be found elsewhere. That is, the ability to model dynamic 3-D geographic data that can be distributed over the web and interactively visualized using a standard browser configuration. GeoVRML includes nodes for VRML97 that perform this task; addressing issues such as coordinate systems, scalability, animation, accuracy, and preservation of the original geographic data. The implementation is released as open source and includes various tools for generating GeoVRML data. All these facilities provide geoscientists with an excellent medium to present complex 3-D geographic data in a dynamic, interactive, and web-accessible format. We illustrate these capabilities using real-world examples drawn from diverse application areas.