Notes on grid visualization

Grids can be visualized in many different ways in Geocap. See Visualizing Grids chapter for an overview.

One common problem our users will encounter is that large grids will not display in full resolution in some display algorithms. Instead a course decimated version of the grid is displayed. A decimation is performed on large grids in some visualization algorithms in order to prevent the computer of running out of memory. When you display a grid, you can see if the grid has been decimated in the lower left corner of the Geocap window. It will display something like the following text: "Original x y inc: 300 300 Decimated x y inc 1000 1000" This means that the original grid increment was 300 meters, but it has been decimated to 1000 meters for the display.

Here is one way to increase the resolution of the display in these display algorithms. In order to get a higher resolution in a smaller area of the grid, you can do the following operation.

  • set the graphics window in 2D mode
  • pan/zoom to the area where you want more detail
  • redisplay the grid
  • return the graphcis window to 3D mode

This operation will only visualize the part of the grid which is inside the 2D window, and will be able to display this part with a higher resolution.

LOD Grid display

When using the LOD Grid display, Geocap will automatically adjust the resolution of the grid depending on your camera position. As you move the camera to new parts of the grid, the visualization is automatically updated. Using this display algorithm you will get full resolution when you zoom in.

Using the LOD Grid display will give a better visualization of large grids, however there are still many grid display methods that are currently not supported by the LOD Grid display. The LOD Grid display will be further developed, and will in the future cover more of the display methods only covered by the static display methods today.