Designing 3D Landscapes

Humans naturally tend to visualise physical landscapes in profile based on our grounded lives on the Earth’s surface, rather than as flat maps. For example, when thinking of a landscape like the Alps, an image of craggy peaks silhouetted against the sky invariably comes to mind instead of a 2D map, which is viewed from a theoretical vantage point above the Earth’s surface. An obliquely viewed 3D landscape is a type of map that shows topography in partial profile. Thus, it is probably more understandable to users, especially those with limited map reading skills, and offers visualization advantages not available in traditional 2D mapping. Presenting maps in 3D allows thematic data with a height component to be presented in a format that more closely resembles natural conditions. Geologic stratigraphy, meteorological phenomena, and bathymetry, all can be more easily visualized in three dimensions.