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From Na Pali to Earth—An ‘Unreal’ Engine for Modern Geodata?

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Modern Approaches to the Visualization of Landscapes

Part of the book series: RaumFragen: Stadt – Region – Landschaft ((RFSRL))

Abstract

The free availability of powerful game engines, such as Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), has revolutionized the possibilities of 3D visualization. These engines include, amongst many other features, a simulation of a realistic physical system. Their early versions are often associated with first-person shooter games, and there are many more application scenarios. Based on the freely available UE4, people can create and share their own virtual landscapes which could be experienced through techniques of immersive VR, such as modern VR headsets. VR software and hardware are currently developing into affordable mass media systems. The new possibilities are explored by researchers of many disciplines, incl. cartographers, geographers and landscape researchers. Research teams dealing with spatial data and information have a high interest in the development of virtual landscapes which are based on highly accurate spatial representations. To achieve this high spatial accuracy, different geodata resources are available. These resources refer to rather traditional origins, such as official surveying departments. Beyond this, the Internet community offers many data sets of sophistically designed and animated 3D objects which could be suitable data sets for virtual landscapes. This article presents and discusses two examples indicating how geodata resources could be used in the creation of modern VR landscapes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Timo Wiedenlübbert and Marco Weissmann for their valuable assistance in creating the figures.

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  1. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Dennis Edler, Julian Keil & Frank Dickmann

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  1. Dennis Edler
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Correspondence to Dennis Edler .

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  1. Geographisches Institut, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Dennis Edler

  2. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Corinna Jenal

  3. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Olaf Kühne

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Edler, D., Keil, J., Dickmann, F. (2020). From Na Pali to Earth—An ‘Unreal’ Engine for Modern Geodata?. In: Edler, D., Jenal, C., Kühne, O. (eds) Modern Approaches to the Visualization of Landscapes. RaumFragen: Stadt – Region – Landschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30956-5_15

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