Under the hood of virtual globes

Abstract

Virtual globes are a key tool for visualizing large geospatial datasets. This half day course goes under the hood of virtual globes and looks at their implementation techniques from the software developer's perspective. Our focus is not on one particular virtual globe, such as NASA World Wind or Google Earth; instead, we discuss common techniques used by many virtual globes, including coordinate transformations, globe representations, precision, multithreading, and terrain rendering. We also consider the differences between virtual globe 3D engines and game engines. Attendees should have software development experience. A background in computer graphics is useful, but not required.