Problem Description

3D building models, together with a digital terrain model, describe the natural topography of the Earth’s surface, including all buildings and structures, in digital form, enabling the representation of cities and towns in virtual worlds. Since 2023, a 3D mesh for North Rhine-Westphalia has been produced from aerial images. It depicts the terrain surface, including vegetation, buildings, and other man-made objects (e.g., parked cars). To achieve this, adjacent three-dimensional points are connected into a mesh through image correlation of the oriented aerial images. The mesh surface is then textured using the underlying aerial images. In recent years, 3D city models have been developed in the municipal context; these are used as a planning basis for, among other things, spatial analyses in three-dimensional space and for public relations work. The 3D mesh from Geobasis NRW is generated for the entire state of North Rhine-Westphalia and represents a realistic model as of the time of data collection. It serves as the data foundation for digital twins.

Although 3D models generated from aerial images have many benefits, they also have serious drawbacks. As the image resolution is pretty low and the images are mainly taken at a very steep angle, building façades are often not adequately illustrated.

Project Definition

Students will design and prototype an Virtual Reality (AR) experience on Meta Quest that enables the exploration of the area around the Gummersbach Campus of TH Köln in Virtual Reality. 3D meshes will be integrated into the VR environment using a SceneServer that is provided by the OpenGeodata.NRW project. The students will evaluate the integration of additional, hand-modeled buildings, e.g. the Campus Steinmüllerallee 1, into the Geobasis NRW dataset, to enable a better representation of our Campus.

Learning Outcome

Students will:

• Understand the principles of interaction in Virtual Reality
• Implement a small project idea that explores navigating and interacting within a Virtual Reality Environment
• Explore Meta Quest capabilities, e.g. hand- and controller tracking

Participation Requirements

Basic knowledge of Unity preferably for the creation of Virtual or Augmented Reality Applications.