Sebastian Pasewaldt, Amir Semmo, Matthias Trapp, Jürgen Döllner

• This article presents multi-perspective 3D panoramas that focus on visualizing 3D geovirtual environments (3D GeoVEs) for navigation and exploration tasks. Their key element, a multi-perspective view (MPV), seamlessly combines what is seen from multiple viewpoints into a single image. This approach facilitates the presentation of information for virtual 3D city and landscape models, particularly by reducing occlusions, increasing screen-space utilization, and providing additional context within a single image. We complement MPVs with cartographic visualization techniques to stylize features according to their semantics and highlight important or prioritized information. When combined, both techniques constitute the core implementation of interactive, multi-perspective 3D panoramas. They offer a large number of effective means for visual communication of 3D spatial information, a high degree of customization with respect to cartographic design, and manifold applications in different domains. We discuss design decisions of 3D panoramasThis article presents multi-perspective 3D panoramas that focus on visualizing 3D geovirtual environments (3D GeoVEs) for navigation and exploration tasks. Their key element, a multi-perspective view (MPV), seamlessly combines what is seen from multiple viewpoints into a single image. This approach facilitates the presentation of information for virtual 3D city and landscape models, particularly by reducing occlusions, increasing screen-space utilization, and providing additional context within a single image. We complement MPVs with cartographic visualization techniques to stylize features according to their semantics and highlight important or prioritized information. When combined, both techniques constitute the core implementation of interactive, multi-perspective 3D panoramas. They offer a large number of effective means for visual communication of 3D spatial information, a high degree of customization with respect to cartographic design, and manifold applications in different domains. We discuss design decisions of 3D panoramas for the exploration of and navigation in 3D GeoVEs. We also discuss a preliminary user study that indicates that 3D panoramas are a promising approach for navigation systems using 3D GeoVEs.…