From Professional to People s Software Tracing the Development of 3D GIS Software at ESRI

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1 From Professional to People s Software Tracing the Development of 3D GIS Software at ESRI Jinwi MA, ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute, USA 1 Abstract 3D Analyst is ESRI s commercial 3D GIS software that was initially released in Over the years, it has significantly increased its popularity, gaining a wide range of support from GIS professionals to casual desktop users. In its development path, it has continuously evolved with the goal to meet the needs of user communities like that of landscape architects. This paper analyzes 3D Analyst development history in various aspects. Three main phases of 3D Analyst development are identified: the formative age as an extension product of ArcView 3, the architecture shift implementation for ArcInfo/ArcView 8, and the enhancement and new establishment at ArcGIS 9. 3D visualization and surface analysis remain as the two fundamental pillars for 3D Analyst. After the architecture shift to COM-based implementations at version 8, 3D Analyst has redirected its focus on realistic visualization and high performance over large datasets. Combining the powers of 2D GIS and 3D CAD systems, it is expected to be an effective tool for planning and design communities. This paper, as an attempt to promote communication between the software developer and its user communities such as that of landscape architects, provides an overall picture to the community about the development of 3D Analyst. 2 Introduction Founded thirty years ago, ESRI has developed a number of sophisticated professional GIS software. The flagship product, ArcInfo, was the first vector-based overlay and cartographic GIS solution released commercially. Over the years, ArcInfo has evolved from an early monolithic Unix workstation program that was used by a relatively small circle of GIS professionals into a component-based desktop software solutions employed by both professionals and casual users. Along the way, ESRI has expanded the core desktop product with many value-added extensions. 3D Analyst is one such extension. From 3D Analyst s first release in 1998 up to now, it has been evolved and matured in its own right. For GIS applications in landscape architecture, one cannot ignore the role of 3D Analyst as it is continuously catering to the needs of its users. To understand its current status, it is important to trace its development path. 3 Pre 3D Analyst Era There were a suite of ArcInfo workstation surface functions already in use well before the 3D Analyst product was first released. Those functions mostly deal with surface analysis

2 2 J. Ma with Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN). Based on these functions, some highly professional surface analysis custom application modules were developed. They are distinctively non-conventional from 2D cartographic point of view and visually rich and attractive. It tended to portray the world intuitively in a non-abstract way. This was already a breakthrough in a cartography-oriented GIS, but seemed lacking some key component if it were geared toward a 3D analysis environment. That key component is real-time interactivity. In the mid-1990s, the success of desktop product ArcView 2/3, a product designed for light GIS users to complement the heavy end of professional ArcInfo workstation GIS, prompted the development of various extension products. The popularization of the Windows NT operating system, the standardization of the industry-standard OpenGL API, and the increasing performance and the decreasing cost of personal computers all added more fuel to the flame. As a result, a new desktop product, called 3D Analyst, went under development. 4 Early Stages with ArcView 3 In the Summer of 1998, after two to three years of internal research and development, the first version of 3D Analyst was released. It was released as an extension product of the core ArcView 3 desktop GIS soon after the release of another extension product, Spatial Analyst. It was the first major desktop GIS application software released from ESRI that had real-time interactive 3D visualization and surface analysis capabilities. For the first time, the data display in a GIS by ESRI was not confined to a 2D environment (with limited zooming and panning capabilities), but in a lively, dynamic, and interactive one not necessarily oriented toward cartographic map production. In other words, the exploration process in the 3D environment itself IS the communication media, i.e. to communicate virtually, rather than through hardcopy. Viewing objects in 3D perspective is important as landscape architects recognize that the ability to support design creativity might be enhanced if designs could easily be viewed and evaluated in 3-D during earlier stages of the design process (Tai, 2002). As an extension of the GIS core software, 3D Analyst utilizes standard GIS data formats. To obtain maximum usability, it also supports other non-proprietary standard data formats. For surface data types, 3D Analyst uses TIN and Grid, which are ESRI proprietary, and can also use standard surface data such as USGS DEM. For vector data types, it uses ESRI s ArcInfo coverage data as well as the non-proprietary, de facto industry standard shapefile, which was initially defined by ESRI but its format had been published. It can also directly use standard CAD data such as DWG, DXF, and DGN files. Most standard raster image formats are supported by 3D Analyst. For 3D output, it can export to standard VRML 2.0 format, which can be viewed in VRML browsers. Beside 3D visualization, surface analysis is another important aspect of a 3D GIS. With 3D Analyst, users can easily perform basic surface analysis tasks such as contour, slope,

3 From Professional to People s Software Tracing the Development of 3D GIS 3 aspect, hillshade, viewshed, cut/fill analyses, and area and volume calculation, all in an intuitive 3D environment. More visualization and analysis functionalities would be added to the product. At this time, however, there was an industry-wide movement and a major architecture shift was in the making. 5 3D Analyst with ArcView 8/ArcInfo 8 Even though 3D Analyst for ArcView 3 supports multiple platforms and operating systems, it was built on an aging architecture lacking extensibility and scalability. At this time, Microsoft has released its Component Object Model (COM) after several years of matured implementation with its own software products. Considering this fact, and the majority of Windows users, ESRI decided to embark on an architecture shift to the Windows-specific COM technology, on which ArcInfo 8 and its various extension products would be built. Substantial resources were spent on the architecture shift throughout the ESRI product line, and for 3D Analyst, there was a completely new application under consideration, named ArcScene. The first release of the COM-based 3D Analyst was in the Summer of 2001 at ArcInfo/ArcView version 8.1 (with ArcScene as its main application program) with its main goal of a stable transition from the old architecture. Yet, along the way many new features were added to make it quite enhanced from the old 3D Analyst for ArcView 3. Among them the most prominent ones are some of the navigation tools such as the fly tool (fly through the scene using the mouse alone as a control) and the gesture tool (rotate/spin at either direction and with adjustable speed by mouse gestures). At the rendering side, new features included interactive light source positioning, layer drawing priority setting, picture fill symbols for textures with transparency, and front and back face culling. 3D perspective view had been the default setting for the scene viewer and users can opt for orthographic view (2D map like), if needed. For image displays, higher default texture resolution had been achieved through internal texture tiling. For export, in addition to VRML 2.0, GeoVRML became another supported format. Additional raster formats (such as PNG format) were supported for scene viewer snapshot. A new, extensible ActiveX scene viewer control was also developed so that a new, navigable 3D viewer could be embedded into other standard Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, and Power Point etc. Good news for third party developers, Avenue was replaced by Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications as the standard customization language. Finally, by building software based on COM, the problems associated with incompatible software versions went away. The subsequent release of 3D Analyst was in early April 2002 with ArcInfo 8.2. The most prominent feature with this release was the addition of the built-in animation capability (see Ma and Bayarri, 2001). After an animation is created, it can be exported to standard AVI animation files for sharing with users who do not have the 3D software.

4 4 J. Ma 6 3D Analyst under ArcGIS 9 If the main goal of the 3D Analyst released at ArcInfo 8.1 was to migrate from the old architecture, then the coming new release of 3D Analyst at ArcGIS 9 (Summer 2003) will be a quantum leap in its own right. A brand new application, called ArcGlobe, brings significant enhancement in the visualization and the performance aspects of the product. For 3D applications, one cannot ignore the quest for realism. Even though this is almost the first thing to have in many other 3D software, it was not in the product function list of 3D Analyst, until ArcGIS 9. There could be many factors in this delay, such as the fact that 3D Analyst was essentially derived from a traditionally 2D cartography oriented GIS setting, the gap between CAD and GIS worlds (see following analysis), high cost or low performance of graphics hardware, and lack of efficient data structure/algorithms and so on. Now we have special software dedicated to 3D applications, most of GIS data can be managed in standard formats and stored in the GeoDatabase, graphics hardware performance and cost ratios are historically low, and software researchers have designed optimal algorithms using more effective data structures. The time was ripe and superrealistic real-time navigation can be achieved, and it is being realized in 3D Analyst for ArcGIS 9. Unlike ArcScene, which is based on a conventional Cartesian coordinate system, ArcGlobe is globe-centric. It employs a hierarchical structure to store data with varying levels of detail (LOD). The hierarchy of data, representing different levels of resolutions, are either pre-processed or processed on the fly and stored on local or remote cache. The appropriate resolutions of data are retrieved from cache to memory for viewing based on the extent of the viewer frustum cast on the terrain, thus the larger the scale (meaning the closer the observer to the terrain), the smaller the extent and the more detail of the data the memory consumed keeps relatively constant (see Crawford et al, 2003). This is truly an elegant solution for managing large amount of geographic data in a 3D viewing environment that requires real-time navigation because the interaction performance will not suffer even if the amount of raw data is extremely large (gigabytes of data is very common). Since it is a globe-centric application, meaning the model is really a globe, there will be no edge of the world effect, as can be seen in some ArcScene applications. All GIS data with valid spatial reference can be loaded into the application without the need for special treatment at the user s end. Since it uses a 3D globe as its core and not two dimensional, like ArcMap, users need not worry about conventional cartographic projection issues. Considering traditional GIS users are more or less cartographers, the elimination of map projection requirement in ArcGlobe is significant. The implicit requirement for cartographic knowledge on 3D GIS users is relaxed. Plans for future ArcGlobe development also include the transition from a desktop product to a web-based product. With data shared across the Internet, globe viewer would be more like a web browser rather than a desktop software. We expect to see a lot more nonprofessional users attracted to 3D Analyst via ArcGlobe.

5 From Professional to People s Software Tracing the Development of 3D GIS 5 The introduction of 3D symbology at ArcGIS version 9.0 makes it possible to render realistic objects that can match those shown in popular computer gaming software. This is realized through direct importing of some popular 3D data formats, namely 3D Studio, OpenFlight, and VRML, into 3D symbol libraries. These 3D symbols do not only take 3D model s accurate geometries, they also have the original textures carried over. Before version 9.0, 3D objects in scene look like a working model in an architecture lab for their monotone color and lack of textures (unless textures are added by customization). Now it can simulate the real world with rich textures. With realism handled at both the global macro level and 3D symbols at the local micro level, a full range of 3D realism is achieved. The built environment (or hardscape) is relatively easy to simulate. The real challenge, however, is to simulate the natural landscape (or softscape), especially trees and shrubs. There are various levels of vegetation models (see Ervin and Hasbrouck, 2001), but as a first attempt to simulate realistic trees, the surface billboard implementation is adopted for its visual effectiveness with a simple geometry that provides for efficient rendering. To simulate natural environment effectively is always a challenge and much research needs to be undertaken in this area. 7 3D Analyst for Landscape Architects Landscape architects were among the earliest users of GIS (see Hanna, 1999). ESRI s president Jack Dangermond (himself a landscape architect) referred to landscape architects as geographic designers, or people who approach spatial problem solving holistically (ibid). There are many stimulating threads on the Landscape Architecture Electronic Forum (maintained by Prof. James Palmer of Syracuse University). One of the interesting topics is about CAD vs GIS. It is natural and efficient to use GIS as an aid to help with landscape planning, especially natural resource planning, but is GIS suitable also for landscape design considering the current situation of CAD domination in the field? The emergence 3D GIS software like 3D Analyst, comfortably assures a positive answer. However it would be beneficial for both GIS software vendors and the landscape architecture community to understand what has been achieved in the development of 3D GIS towards landscape architecture applications, and what has not. This will guide future development. CAD software (especially AutoCAD) is a mature tool in the design field and its user base is well-established. Yet the total number of landscape architects (most of them using a CAD package as the design aid) remains small, compared to that of architects and civil engineers. In this smaller community, however, more and more landscape architecture firms require CAD experience with new hires (Tai, 2002). On the other hand, GIS is still a relatively new field and its impact is still growing. A GIS is first about geography, i.e. sensitive to locations, and second it is an information system. A GIS user benefits from the system by being able to efficiently retrieve and effectively display location sensitive information about a place. Is this what a landscape architect wants? Not always but sometimes. It is a full-time job to be a GIS professional. Is it required that landscape architects should also be GIS professionals? Not exactly but some knowledge would definitely help. Therefore,

6 6 J. Ma an ideal modern landscape architect would need to possess knowledge and expertise not only in CAD but also in GIS, at least partially. According to the Fact Sheet about Landscape Architecture (see ASLA), there are basically two kinds of activities in the profession: planning related and design related. The new 3D Analyst, combining the best functionalities of both worlds (CAD, with 3D capability, and conventional GIS, i.e. 2D GIS), stands as a strong contender as an effective tool for landscape architects. It can handle landscape planning at smaller scale covering large areas as well as landscape design at a larger scale covering small areas. Global or regional landscape planning is about large scale design solutions that concern extensive areas of land (ibid). This is where ArcGlobe, the new application of 3D Analyst, shines. Local area large scale designs focus on physical dimensions and psychological impact or expressions, and that is where 3D Analyst s CAD-like symbology functionalities come into play. The new 3D Analyst is not only good at 3D functions at the local scale (as a 3D CAD system can do), it also excels in 3D operations at the global scale. In this sense, 3D Analyst appears to have bridged the gap between planning and design fields; it is a GIS but can also be utilized as a CAD system. 8 Summary & Outlook Looking at the development path of the 3D Analyst, we can identify roughly three phases. The first is the formative and exploration stage, when an extension product of ArcView 3 was produced. At this stage, the basic 3D GIS environment and functionalities were established. The second is the transition stage, as 3D Analyst remained as an extension of ArcView 8 or ArcInfo 8, and a new application program ArcScene was created. At this stage, the new architecture shift was completed and some new features were added. The third is the expansion and self-identity stage and it is where we are standing right now. On one hand ArcScene is improving, and on the other, a brand new program, ArcGlobe, is taking its new shape as a new 3D GIS application that is uniquely different than its cartography counterpart, ArcMap. Through these three major stages, 3D Analyst has recreated itself by completing an architecture shift, greatly enhancing its visualization and significantly boosting its performance. It is not difficult to foresee its potential to emerge from the shadow of being an extension product of ArcMap, a professional cartographyoriented GIS software, to become a self-contained product on a par with or even surpass ArcMap in its influence and to become a more popular, rather than professional software. We are now at a critical point in the development of 3D Analyst as the quest for realistic visualization and high performance takes higher priority. Another important feature with increasing demand is 3D data interactive editing. Since the data to be edited could be the same as those used by ArcMap, the proper execution and implementation of such an editor needs to be resolved. Moreover, true 3D volumetric model may become the next task to tackle. Dealing with temporal data is perhaps the most challenging job of all because to date, all existing GIS data are virtually time dumb, meaning the temporal information, if any, are still relegated to feature attribute status; they should be elevated to the same level as the fundamental geometry of the data. The good news is that research has been initiated

7 From Professional to People s Software Tracing the Development of 3D GIS 7 on integrating the temporal data oriented product, Tracking Analyst, with 3D Analyst. These two products, with much commonality especially for their animation features, were separately developed, until today. As 3D Analyst is being developed, advanced users would keep posing more challenging requests, and ESRI would need to carefully evaluate various user demands/requests for future development. Of course, the biggest help for the 3D Analyst s development will have to come from its user community like that of landscape architects. There are various efforts from both inside and outside of ESRI trying to make GIS tools more effective and user friendly for landscape architects, and 3D Analyst is proudly one of such endeavors. 9 Acknowledgements The author appreciates the help from 3D Product Manager Clayton Crawford in reviewing the original draft and providing constructive comments and suggestions. The author is also grateful for the reviewing and comments from Paul Yoshitomi of ESRI s Internationalization Team. 10 Reference ASLA, Fact Sheet, Washington DC. Crawford C., Bayarri S., and Petrovic D (2003): Fast 3-D Visualization of Large Image Datasets in a GIS, to be published on ASPRS Annual Conference Proceedings, May 5-9, 2003, Anchorage, Alaska, USA. Ervin S. & Hasbrouck H. (2001): Landscape Modeling, McGraw-Hill, USA. Hanna K. C. (1999): GIS for Landscape Architects, ESRI Press, Redlands. Ma J. (2003): Symbolize or Not Symbolize, to be published on ICC Bi-Annual Conference Proceedings, August 10-16, 2003, Durban, South Africa. Ma J. & Bayarri S. (2001): Real-Time 3D Animations in a 3D GIS, published in ICC Bi- Annual Conference Proceedings, August 6-10, 2001, Beijing, China. Maguire D. (2003): Improving CAD-GIS Interoperability, ArcNews Winter 2003/2003, 24(4). Tai L. (2002): Chasing the Computer Revolution, Landscape Architecture, 5/2002: , Washington D.C. Zeiler M. (2001): Exploring ArcObjects: Vol. II Geographic Data Management, ESRI Press, Redlands.

GENERALIZATION IN THE NEW GENERATION OF GIS. Dan Lee ESRI, Inc. 380 New York Street Redlands, CA USA Fax:

GENERALIZATION IN THE NEW GENERATION OF GIS Dan Lee ESRI, Inc. 380 New York Street Redlands, CA 92373 USA dlee@esri.com Fax: 909-793-5953 Abstract In the research and development of automated map generalization,