Distortion visualization techniques for 3D coherent sets: A case study of 3D building property units

In the fields of 3D cadastre and 3D property management system, numerous building property objects are adjacent as primary property units assemble into a 3D coherent set. During visualization process of the coherent set, occlusion, obscure, mazy spatial relationships and relative location relationships among the units of the coherent set cause difficulty in observing and understanding the set and its units. Common 3D objects viewing method, such as rotation and navigation obtaining desired visualization effects through adjusting the view angle and position of the camera's field of view, provides weak interactive experience and orientation control for the coherent set because of the neighbour relationships of the 3D objects inside the set. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to solve the prior problems with two basic distortion methods based on “focus + context” theory. The coherent set is first discretized into individual objects and changed them locations according to linear or orthogonal function, while keeping their relative location and dual topological relationships. To maintain both global context awareness (topology and locations) of 3D coherent set and highlight effect of the focus 3D building property object, three evaluation indexes are adopted to assess the corresponding distortion results. A case study based on the real clustered 3D property in Shenzhen was conducted to evaluate the performance of distortion functions, the result shows that the method proposed in this article can not only expand the visual area of focused object and create a clear line of sight (LOS) to the focal object previously obscured, but also maintain verticality and proximity in some degree to facilitate understand the spatial occupation and distribution of whole coherent objects.