Design of a walkthrough system for indoor environments from floor plans

Abstract

This paper is to share some experience in designing a practical walkthrough system for indoor environments. We discuss issues from the design of efficient utility programs for building 3D models to the design of a walkthrough engine. Our utility programs allow the creation of the interior of a several storied building in a few man-days. We also propose several rendering speedup techniques implemented in our walkthrough system. Tests have been carried out to bench mark the amount of speedup brought about by different techniques. One of these techniques, called dynamic visibility, proves to be more efficient than existing standard visibility preprocessing methods.