Image-Based Modeling of Urban Buildings Using Aerial Photographs and Digital Maps

A VR (virtual reality) simulator which is used for helicopter simulations requires a virtual environment of real world urban areas. However, real urban environments are continuously changing. It is necessary to develop a modeling method that makes direct use of GIS (geographical information system) data which is updated periodically. A flight simulation needs to visualize not only buildings in the near distance but also a large number of buildings in the far distance. We propose a method for modeling urban environments from aerial images and digital maps with relatively little manual work. An image‐based method is applied to the urban modeling that considers the characteristics of Korean cities. Buildings in the distance can be presented without creating a large number of polygons. The proposed method consists of a pre‐processing stage that prepares the model from the GIS data and a modeling stage that creates the virtual urban environment. The virtual urban environment utilizes the height map of buildings.