Virtual Terrain Community
Organizations, Conferences, Community and News Sites
	- 3D GeoInfo
		- International Workshop on 3D Geoinformation, subjects of interest: "3D data acquisition technology through remote sensing, 
		photogrammetry, LiDAR, and visualization technology (3D CAD and VR 
		system) for 3D urban environments"
- The first conference (3DGeoInfo'06) 
		was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, August 2006
		
			- Many papers on 3D GIS, urban visualization and related 
			subjects.  The
			proceedings are available as 'Innovations in 3D Geoinformation Science' 
			(ISBN 3-540-36997-X).  It is a massive hardcover book, 760 pages 
			with 438 illustrations.  It can be purchased
			
			from amazon.com or
			
			from springer.de (€170).
 
- 2007: 3Dgeoinfo07: Delft, 
		Netherlands
			- Full title: 2nd International Workshop on 3D Geo-Information: Requirements, 
			Acquisition, Modelling, Analysis, Visualisation
 
- 2008-2009 events were in Seoul and Ghent
- 2010: 5th International 3D 
	GeoInfo Conference 2010: Berlin
- 2011: Joint ISPRS 
		Workshop on 3D City Modelling & Application and the 6th 3D GeoInfo 
		Conference Wuhan, China
- 2012: 7th  3D GeoInfo 2012 
		conference: Québec City, Canada
		
- 2013: 8th 3DGeoInfo in Istambul 
		will be November 2013
 
- 
	OSGeo 
	- the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
		 A foundation to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led 
		open source geospatial software projects, and other related endeavors.  
		While not particularly 3D, the Open Geo aspects of the group form an 
		important underlying field for terrain visualization. A foundation to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led 
		open source geospatial software projects, and other related endeavors.  
		While not particularly 3D, the Open Geo aspects of the group form an 
		important underlying field for terrain visualization.
- 
		Created 
		February 2006, it publishes a journal and holds a conference, FOSS4G
- FOSS4G 2006: Lausanne, 
		Switzerland 
- FOSS4G 2007: Victoria, BC
- 
		FOSS4G 2008: 
		Cape Town, South Africa
- FOSS4G 2009: Sydney, Australia
- FOSS4G 2010: Barcelona, Spain
- FOSS4G 2011: Denver, CO
- FOSS4G 2013: Nottingham UK
 
- ISDE: International Society for Digital Earth / 
	International Symposium on Digital Earth 
		- Although the US "digital earth" initiative was mainly in the 1990s (see Government Projects) 
		it did lead to a series of interesting international conventions.
- As of 2007, there is a single site for the organization, as
		
		http://www.digitalearth-isde.org/ 
- Conferences:
		
		
- Journal:
		
 
- Digital Landscape Architecture (DLA)
	
- 3D Visualization World
		- Online news site which coverts a lot of terrain-relevant subjects.
 
- 
	 SlashGeo SlashGeo
		- News and discussion site, a "Slashdot for GIS and Remote Sensing".
- It doesn't get much traffic, but the quality of the news is good.
 
- 3D Ethics Charter
		- A proposal launched in Monaco in February 2011 to try to enforce 
		some ethical guidelines on using 3D data.  It sounds nice enough 
		(Principle of credibility, Principle of transparency, Principle of 3D 
		network development and training) but it's not clear how such a thing 
		would work.
 
- Digital Landscape Architecture 2009
		- Held in Malta, May 21 - 22, 2009
- Topics: "Digital Landscape Design for the Mediterranean Islands, 
		Landscape Information Models LIMs, 3D, 4D and VR Landscape 
		Visualization, Teaching Digital Landscape Architecture, Knowledge Based 
		Landscape Architecture, 3D-Workmethod in Landscape Design"
 
 
- Landscape Visualization blog
		- Administered by Olaf Schroth, with emphasis on the "landscape" side 
		of terrain visualization
 
- Virtual 
	Globe and Terrain Rendering blog
		- A blog by Patrick Cozzi and Kevin Ring of
		Analytical Graphics, Inc. who are 
		apparently writing a large page book on how to implement "virtual globe" 
		software, expected to be published in summer 2011
 
- International Society on Virtual Systems 
	and MultiMedia (VSMM)
		- An organization which "seeks to address concerns and issues with the 
		use of Virtual Reality technologies and provides a foundation for integrating 
		together the human, technological and strategic aspects of VR under the 
		umbrella of international exchange, cooperation and development".
- They hold an annual conference, e.g.
		VSMM 2004,
		VSMM 2005
- Of greatest interest is their
		Virtual Heritage Network ("Organization 
		for the use of technology in Cultural Heritage") which focuses on archaeology 
		and technologies which overlap with terrain modeling as described on this 
		site.
 
- Vis-Sim
		- 
		 The 
		Image Society The 
		Image Society
			- a technical, non-profit, professional association whose purpose 
			is the technological advancement of real-time visual simulation, related 
			VR technologies, and their applications, primarily by means of an annual 
			conferences with papers
- deals with a lot of terrain-related companies and technologies, 
			mostly "Vis Sim", i.e. aerospace/military
 
- For many years, vis-sim.org was a great place vis-sim industry news 
		and gossip, but it shut down in June 2003.  Numerous sites sprung 
		up in its wake.
- modsim.org
			- news portal for "the Visual Simulation & Modeling Industry", begun 
			December 2003
 
 
- Virtual Globes Directory
		- A central depository for "virtual globe" related links.  The term 
		seems to mean terrain visualization at the global level.  They had 
		a blog, but it's offline as of 2007.
- It's not clear how it relates to another popular blog of the same name, 
		Geography 2.0: Virtual Globes.
 
- Geosimulation Homepage
	
- Geoplace.com
		- a news portal primarily for GIS, but increasingly covering terrain visualization 
		subjects as well
 
- nextgen3dcity
		- First International Workshop on Next Generation 3D City Models Bonn, 
		Germany, June 2005.  It covered many virtual terrain subjects, 
		see the papers in the 
		program.
 
- CUPUM (Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management)
		- Bi-annual conference which published many papers overlapping the field 
		of virtual terrain
- 1997 (Bombay) 1999 (Venice), 2001 (Manoa/Honolulu), 2003 (Sendai),
		2005 (UCL London), CUPUM 2009 
		Hong Kong, CUPUM 2013 Utrecht
- CUPUM seems to be little-known outside of a narrow band of people; those 
		in the visualization fields and even many of those in urban planning haven't 
		heard of it!
 
- WSCG - International Conferences in Central 
	Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision