Introduction
GIS (Geographical Information System) is a computer support system that represents data using maps. It helps people access, display and analyse data that has geographic content and meaning. For those not familiar with GIS, it used to be a niche IT market dominated by the traditional GIS and CAD companies such as Intergraph, Bentley, MapInfo, Autodesk and ESRI. Nowadays global IT giants such as Microsoft, Google and Oracle are competing for their share of the pie through products such as Virtual Earth, Google Earth and Oracle Spatial. NASA has also recently released a free, open source GIS viewer application called World Wind.
In this article, I will demonstrate how to build a standalone 3D terrain visualisation tool from scratch using C# and Managed DirectX 9.0c. The application will allow the user to rotate the point of view using the arrow keys and to change the rendering mode to (P) Point, (W) Wire frame and (S) Solid.
Background
I recently completed a GIS system implementation for a local City Council. During that project I developed a proof of concept application to demonstrate the technical feasibility of 3D visualisation using the available spot heights and aerial photography textures. The aim of this article is to share my knowledge and experience with all developers interested in GIS and .NET.
Requirements
Before we start, I would like to specify the software requirements for this project:
- Visual Studio .NET IDE (I used 2005 beta 2)
- Managed DirectX 9.0c SDK (I used August 2005 update)
- .NET framework (I used v2.0 but v1.1 will work as well)
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