The 3D Web Client “XNavigator” is a virtual globe application that acts as client to a “Web 3D Service (W3DS)”. W3DS is a draft specification by the OpenGeospatial Consortium (OGC), that has been extended by Arne Schilling of the GIScience Research Group at the University of Heidelberg.
The software has its origins in projects on 3D geospatial data infrastructures (http://gdi-3d.de) with the example of the city of Heidelberg (http://heidelberg-3d.de) and was also used as integrated client in the OGC Web Services Testbed OWS6, including tests on 3D Indoor Navigation.
Only recently it has been extended into a virtual globe that delivers interactive 3D scenes generated from OpenStreetMap and SRTM terrain data at http://OSM-3D.org . Currently free 3D data for all of Europe with over 30 million buildings have been integrated into that application.
This 3D client software is written in Java and can be configured as Applet, as Java WebStart or as Java Desktop application.
Further it includes several extensions for integrating other OGC services, such as WMS, WFS, WPS, OpenLS Route Service, SOS, CS-W etc. It supports styling by SLD (OGC Symbology Endcoding), the use of WMS and OSM map services as terrain textures as well as the overlay of GPX-routes. Further it can import CityGML or VRML files and features a physical atmosphere and simulation of time and date.
The whole client has now been made available Open Source under the GNU Public Licence by the Chair of GIScience at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. We are looking forward to community contributions to this 3D web client. The OSM-3D.org service URL can be accessed for free, but the server itself as well as the data processing tools are still being extended in PhD research projects and therefore are not included in that package.
More information:
http://osm-3d.org/project.html
http://koenigstuhl.geog.uni-
http://giscience.uni-hd.de
http://w3ds.org
