Integrating Server-based Simulations into Web-based Geo-applications

In this work, we present a novel approach for combining fluid simulations running on a GPU server with terrain rendered by a web-based 3D GIS system. We introduce a hybrid rendering approach, combining server-side and client-side rendering, to interactively display the results of a shallow water simulation on client devices using web technology. To display water and terrain in unison, we utilize image merging based on depth values. We extend it to deal with numerical and compression artifacts as well as Level-of-detail rendering and use Depth Image Based Rendering to counteract network latency.