Defense

EarthDetails' leading edge terrain algorithm stores, queries, and 3D visualizes high resolution, planetary scale datasets. It is based on accurate mapping principals and can visualize imagery, vectors, building, and sensory data (routes, obstacles, regions, assets, friendly and enemy locations, etc.)

Demos

The following video demonstrates an EarthDetails fly-through in real time using nothing but outdated hardware. We recommend that you save the video to avoid network interruptions (right click, Save Target As...) before playing it. Note the frame rate and detail.

Fly-Through Permormance Demos

Hardware: low-end ATI Radeon 9200 video card, single core AMD Athlon, 1GB RAM, IDE hard-disk)
Data: US county, LIDAR elevation at 4 ft spacing(average), 1 ft ortho imagery, and 300 thousand rooftops supplied as polygons with a fixed height.

Click the picture below to access the Canadian public dataset rendered with a 2 pixel maximum error as far as the eye can see. Note the incredible detail on the horizon. Also note that the scene is fully navigable and provides detail on slope, aspect, elevation, and coordinates at every point, as well as bearing, distances, and elevation gains to any device that has the most basic web browser. (See Help Page.)

Why EarthDetails?

With the market saturated with 3D software with all sorts of bells and whistles, why EarthDetails?

Below, we will show the core differences in EarthDetails technology. But, in a nut-shell, we have spent significant time and resources to build a great 3D engine that handles continental datasets, is fast, accurate, portable, and requires low bandwidth.

Fundamental Advantages

• Accuracy - 3D visualization and analysis is computationally intensive. To avoid the dreaded hourglass and turtle frame-rates, 3D software make approximations further away from the camera.

  Most 3D software achieves this by dropping every second row and column from the height data mesh that defines the terrain. As moving yet further into the distance, this process is repeated, each time doubling the gap between actual data points indiscriminately. So that the data spacing goes from 1m, 2m, 4m, 8m, 16m, etc.

  This widening grid, quickly misses mud walls, bridges, antennas, irrigation ditches, and even hills and valleys in the distance Further, not only this arbitrary thinning out of data blows away critical features, but it keeps many redundant points in the flat areas, making it inaccurate and wasteful.

  In contrast, EarthDetails analyzes the terrain for features and their significance, and then stores, queries, and displays the terrain based on this importance, so that it is guaranteed to be always within strict user requested tolerances from the full resolution data.

  With the EarthDetails algorithm, we can take the nationwide Canadian public dataset (23m grid), and approximate it within 8 meters of the deck on a 4GB usb stick! Conventional compression algorithms will loose the detail of the narrower features such as mud walls and trenches and, therefore, can provide no guarantee on tolerances. But EarthDetails approximation is guaranteed to requested tolerance so that a missle can use it to fly through an antenna field.

• Speed - Speed is the tradeoff for accuracy. Because EarthDetails achieves accuracy by maintining the significant features while blowing away the rest, it performs faster when accuracy is demanded.
• Portability - Many 3D solutions have specific platform requirements. They work on certain hardware, with certain operating systems, and require specific video cards for good performance.
EarthDetails achieves platform independence in 2 ways:

1. It has a 3D webserver that exposes its 3D engine to any web browser on any platform. For example, these indistructable field PDA and Tablets can access its 3D capabilities, in the field, over wireless networks.


2. By virtue of gaining performance through terrain analysis as opposed to relying on high-end processors and video-cards, EarthDetails can be ported to render offline on mobile platforms without math-coprocessors or video hardware, namely - field equipment.

Aside from its high-performance visualization capability, the EarthDetails algorithm achieves phenomenal performance in line of sight and trajectory calculations. This is necessary for knowing which support weapons can strike which enemy locations, color coding dead-ground, forward/reverse slopes to those locations, and other terrain analysis that can visually aid soldiers at all levels in today's high stress battlefield.

Initial Offering >>,

Highlights:

EarthDetails renders over 300 thousand rooftops, irregular high density LIDAR elevation data, and high resolution imagery supplied by OSI Geospatial for an entire county in the NorthWest.
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EarthDetails brings 3D to handhelds.

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EarthDetails renders the US West Coast with Geological Survey data.

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