Boston Visualization

The Boston database showcases TerraTools' ability to leverage imagery, GIS, and AutoCAD data from municipal city planning data to rapidly generate a large area complex urban visualization. Without significant additions to the data, TerraTools can create up-to-date visualizations over the entire city area or focus on key neighborhoods or project sites. Coupled with the interactive query capability of our TerraTours® viewer, CAD drawings, still photography, videos, and web-enabled media can be spatially linked by TerraTools GISLink&trade processing.

In this project, we used Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) GIS data in an inset area that included the Massachusetts State House, Boston Common, and Hayward Place. Roads have a realistic curb structure that was automatically generated from road polygon data and the terrain areas were textured based upon their appropriate land cover attribute values. The BRA GIS data also provided building footprints with attributed height values that were easily converted into extruded buildings with random geo-typical wall textures and roofs. The visualization contains nearly 6,000 extruded buildings.

Several landmark buildings of interest were modeled with geospecific textures and structures. The original AutoCAD models were simplified to support the requirements for real-time visualization and they were textured from ground digital photographs using 3DStudioMAX. Geospecific models include the Fleet Center, Faneuil Hall, the Massachusetts State House, Hancock Towers, 111 Huntington Avenue, and the Prudential Building. These models were added to a user-defined TerraTools model library for automatic placement and integration within the visualization.

Click here to see a fly-through of the Boston database.

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