An Augmented Reality Application for Mobile Visualization of GIS-Referenced Landscape Planning Projects

Abstract

We introduce an augmented reality application that allows the representation of planned real world objects (e.g. wind turbines or power poles) at their actual geographic location. The application uses GPS for positioning, which is then supplemented by augmented reality feature tracking to get a constant and stable positional and rotational reading. As addition to the visualization, we use on-the-fly gathered sensor data to identify foreground objects. Thus, for practical scenarios our application depicts images with mostly correct occlusion between real and virtual objects. The application will be used to support urban and landscape planners in their process, especially for the purpose of public information and acceptance. It provides an advantage to current planning processes, where the representation of objects is limited to positions on maps, miniature models, or at best a photo montage where the object is placed into a still camera image.