ABSTRACT
Computer technologies have been used to visualize current or potential future landscapes in many different ways (Sheppard, 1989). Examples include approaches based on the digital manipulation of photographs (e.g. Simpson et al., 1997) and applications of a variety of stand-alone visualization packages (e.g. Berry et al., 1998; Bishop, 1994a). The ability to display landscape characteristics by draping a colour-coded image, such as a satellite-derived classification of land cover, on a digital terrain model has been an established feature of many commercial GIS for at least a decade, but until a few years ago the more sophisticated rendering capabilities of 3D visualization programs were not readily available to the GIS user (Sheppard, 1999). More recently, however, there has been a convergence of the two types of software, with published studies describing the export of feature outlines from GIS databases to visualization packages, as well as more closely coupled integrations (e.g. Bishop and Karadaglis, 1997; Mason et al., 1997). There have also been improvements in the 3D visualization capabilities directly embedded within GIS, prominent examples being the 3D Analyst module of ArcView (https://www.esri.com/ software/arcview/extensions/3dext.html) and the VirtualGIS facility of ERDAS Imagine (https://www.erdas.com).
