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Elevation Shaded Image (ESI)Enabling the realistic display of topographical information, at unprecedented degrees of accuracy, for a wide variety of applications
A Growing Need for Accurate Visualizations
Intermap Technologies® recognizes that the growing demand for 3D visualizations in Web-based mapping platforms, personal navigation devices (PNDs), and a wide variety of other applications calls for realistic and aesthetically pleasing images. Intermap’s elevation shaded image (ESI) is based on the company’s highly accurate NEXTMap® digital elevation data and provides unequalled spatial context of terrain model data in a 2D or 3D environment. A Long List of Applications
The ESI dramatically enhances a number of visualization processes, such as those displayed on PNDs and in-dash automobile navigation systems, to provide an extraordinary degree of realism for an experience – whether it’s a hike in the mountains or a drive along a coastal highway – that simply can’t be duplicated with ordinary imagery. Traditional maps, including those with underlying optical images, provide a true representation of ground features, such as roads, buildings, and parks, but they can’t convey specific elevation information, or "the lay of the land."
While relief maps do portray elevation information and are used today in a number of different thematic mapping products, such as elevation analysis, land use, and land cover, users of those mapping products may not be able to discern the specific nature of a particular area’s terrain without other visual clues.
The high-resolution aerial image of Bavaria, Germany, at left was combined with a NEXTMap DTM to create the elevation shaded image at right. Features in this hilly region that gain perspective not discernible in the aerial image include the open pit mine in the middle right of the image, the lake and terrain surrounding it in the lower portion of the image, and the relatively flat terrain of the towns to the north. (Aerial image courtesy of GeoContent™, an Intermap partner.)
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