Improving rendering speed of 3D geospatial data based on HTML5/WebGL using improved arithmetic operation speed

ABSTRACT

The plug-in must be installed in the web environment to enable 3D spatial data service. Increasingly, these plug-ins are unused owing to installation errors, unsupported cross-browser compatibility, and security vulnerabilities. Specifically, in 2015, the NPAPI service was terminated and is now running only on applications based on Internet Explorer. In response, HTML5/WebGL (next-generation Web standard, confirmed in October 2014) technology has emerged. WebGL has been able to display 3D spatial data without any plug-in in any browser. In this study, we attempted to identify the necessary technologies and limitations for 3D spatial data display using HTML5/WebGL and suggested ways to improve the display speed. We used Emscripten technology to improve the speed of arithmetic operations. To conduct an experimental implementation on the proposed method, we used the 3D data provided by ‘Spatial Information Open Platform (VWorld)’ in Korea and analyzed the display speed of 3D spatial data in terms of frames per second and rendering time.

KEYWORDS:

• HTML5
• WebGL
• Emscripten
• asm.js
• 3D spatial data
• 3D rendering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the 2016 sabbatical year research grant of the University of Seoul.