Open source, 3-D terrain visualization on a mobile device

With the increase in computing power available to mobile devices has come the ability to efficiently display geographic data, which includes 3-dimensional terrain, virtually anywhere. In the work presented here, we provide a high-level overview of software for fetching, viewing, and interacting with geographic data on a mobile device. The software is a re-implementation of NASA´s World Wind code targeted for Apple´s iOS platform. The resulting code and application programming interface are available in an open source and extensible manner, which allows other developers to build computationally efficient and more custom applications for using 3D geographic data on the iOS platform than with other popular geographic visualization software. To demonstrate the utility of the software, we describe a tool targeted for use in general aviation that is intended to increase situational awareness while en route as well as enabling improved visualization and planning capabilities during pre-flight. To accomplish this, many of the features of the World Wind iOS implementation are exercised.