Integrated Tourist Navigation System

Tourist navigation systems have used digital maps to provide users with location and route information for a long time. However, without detailed 3D building models, users may miss important turns at some intersections and have problems to find their target buildings. With the advent of Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, 3D models of buildings in major cities worldwide can be conveniently created and shared. In this paper, we present two methods, i.e., overlay-style blending and Escher-style blending, to seamlessly integrate 2D maps and 3D buildings into a tourist navigation system. We also provide useful visual cues indicating occluded roads and buildings. Our solutions can be applied to other navigation systems such as interactive city guide maps.