Web-based Exploration of and Interaction with Large and Deeply Structured Semantic 3D City Models using HTML5 and WebGL

The aim of the presented work is to present a framework and implementation of a web-based 3D client for processing, visualization and analysis of very large semantic 3D city models. In addition, the framework supports rich interaction with deeply nested structures of the 3D city objects. To improve the performance and user-experience on the web environment, the proposed framework utilizes HTML5 and WebGL allowing the application to be crossbrowser, cross-platform and plugin-independent. For visualization purposes, WebGL based Cesium virtual globe has been used and extended in this work to support visualization, exploration and interaction with large and deeply structured semantic 3D city objects.