Methodology for the efficient progressive distribution and visualization of 3D building objects

Three-dimensional (3D), city models have been applied in a variety of fields. One of the main problems in 3D city model utilization, however, is the large volume of data. In this paper, a method is proposed to generalize the 3D building objects in 3D city models at different levels of detail, and to combine multiple Levels of Detail (LODs) for a progressive distribution and visualization of the city models. First, an extended structure for multiple LODs of building objects, BuildingTree, is introduced that supports both single buildings and building groups; second, constructive solid geometry (CSG) representations of buildings are created and generalized. Finally, the BuildingTree is stored in the NoSQL database MongoDB for dynamic visualization requests. The experimental results indicate that the proposed progressive method can efficiently visualize 3D city models, especially for large areas.