Efficient Creation of 3D-Virtual Environments for Driving Simulators

The use of driving simulators offers great potential for cost and time minimization and additionally provides the necessary safe test and evaluation methods in the development of automotive products. The range of driving simulators varies from simple desktop racks or virtual reality based setups to highly dynamic driving simulators with a full motion system. A key aspect of driving simulators is the degree of immersion of the user. A realistic visualization is therefore a crucial task. In this paper, an efficient and automated approach to create 3D virtual environments from various data sources is presented. Available sources such as OpenStreetMap [18], existing OpenDrive [10] maps, CityGML [19] and digital terrain models [20] are taken into account. These sources are then fused together and information is corrected based on existing norms and regulations. Finally, information is enriched and procedural algorithms are deployed to create a realistic 3D environment. The approach is presented independently from the underlying engine. However, for our evaluation we utilized the well known games engine Unity [16]. The approach was tested in various locations within Germany and an evaluation based on a used study was conducted, leading to promising results.