SBIR-STTR Award

Increased use of aerial photography and satellite imagery in visual simulation has created problems for low-cost PC based systems. Although the performance of low-cost graphics systems is adequate for real-time interactive visualization tasks, the immense disk and memory configurations to support image-based databases are a major cost and technological obstruction. This proposal will investigate wavelet compression/decompression in a database paging scheme for real-time applications with potential for this capability to be hardware accelerated in Phase II. TERREX has already developed and successfully commercialized database generation software (Terra Vista) and a run-time paging format (TerraPage) which it proposes to extend through this SBIR contract. Our proposal is innovative as it a) promotes a multi-vendor runtime solution with open-source, public domain APIs, b) the solution is backed up by a commercially successful database generation system, and c) the proposed applications include much larger markets such as PC games and Geographic Information systems which will give this development effort a much stronger potential to be adapted to hardware and commercialized in later phases. TERREX has technical expertise and existing commercial products highly complementary to this SBIR topic. The company has an outstanding record of developing commercial software products for real-time interactive 3D simulation. The Phase I research will provide an initial design for a wavelet compression scheme tied to a paging system for run-time applications. A prototype system will be implemented and demonstrated at the end of Phase I by extending TERREX' existing commercial database generation software and paging format/APIs. This demonstration capability should provide quantifiable results on the technical viability of the wavelet compression scheme, any issues/problems related to its use in real-time 3D applications, and an assesment of its further potential development as a hardware accelerated compression/decompression engine in Phase II and Phase III of the project. Potential post applications for the wavelet compression technology proposed herein lie in any field in which large 3D datasets are combined with high-resolution imagery in a real-time, interactive environment. This most clearly affects the Modeling and Simulation community, the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community, and in Computer Game Software. Wavelet compression promises image size reduction which will dramatically affect the amount and quality of imagery which can be used on interactive PC based visual applications.

Terrain Experts (TERREX) has developed an open-source database format, TerraPage, for terrain paging in database visualization applications. Applications include mission planning and military training and simulation, and commercial applications in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and urban visualization. As a result of the Phase I SBIR, TerraPage now supports wavelet compression to reduce the size of the output database by as much as 95% with minimal degradation. TerraPage makes the generation and display of large databases with high-fidelity imagery possible on open-architecture Personal Computer (PC) hardware at much lower cost than existing proprietary hardware and software solutions. Terra Vista, TERREX' commercial database generation application, also now uses wavelet compression to improve the database generation process for the end user. The Phase I investigation has revealed promising directions for this technology, including embedding wavelet decompression in hardware, exploring additional wavelet algorithms, and further improvements to database generation and storage which are the basis of this Phase II technical proposal. TERREX has entered into an agreement with a major graphics chip and board manufacturer and a run-time application provider to investigate the possibility of embedding wavelet decompression in graphic display cards for the PC platform, for continued work on a Phase II SBIR.

Keywords:
Terrain, Wavelet , Compression, Database Paging