AR-based Visibility Evaluation for Preserving Landscapes of
Historical Buildings
Nobuyoshi Yabuki* Kyoko Miyashita**
* Division of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering, Osaka University
** Hyogo Prefecture
ABSTRACT
Building tall structures behind an aesthetic and historical building
tends to destroy the good landscape. To avoid such situations,
public agencies must regulate height of buildings and other
structures near the landscape target. In order to check the visibility
of portions of high, future structures, in this research, a new
method using Augmented Reality (AR) was proposed. In this
method, a number of virtual rectangular objects with a scale are
located on the grid of 3D geographical model. And then, the
virtual rulers are shown in an overlapping manner with the actual
landscape from multiple viewpoints using the AR technology. The
user measures the maximum skyline-preserving height for each
rectangular object at a grid point. Using the measured data, the
government or public agencies can establish appropriate height
regulations for all surrounding areas of the target structures. To
verify the proposed method, a system was developed deploying
AR Toolkit and was applied to a scenic building. The
performance of the system was checked and then, the errors of the
obtained data were evaluated. In conclusion, the proposed method
was evaluated feasible and effective.
KEYWORDS: Augmented reality, landscape, invisible depth.
INDEX TERMS: H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]:
User InterfacesGraphical User Interface
1 INTRODUCTION
Preserving singular landscapes such as historical buildings,
temples, shrines, churches, bridges, and natural sceneries is
important. Recently, destructions of good landscapes from
multiple viewpoints due to construction of high rise buildings
have been reported. To prevent landscape destruction and to
preserve singular landscape, regulation of height of buildings and
other structures both in and outside of the landscape preservation
area can be enforced. In order to properly set the height regulation,
it is necessary to evaluate the maximum height that does not
disturb the landscape, which is called invisible depth or skyline-
preserving height [1] as shown in Figure 1, for all the points
behind the specific objects making good landscape. This task is
not so simple because the terrain elevations of surrounding area
vary from place to place. Conventional manual methods such as
* Address: 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan.
Email: yabuki@see.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2010
Science and Technolgy Proceedings
13 -16 October, Seoul, Korea
978-1-4244-9346-3/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
Tomohiro Fukuda*
manual drawings and using surveying equipment would require
much time and effort.
Although Virtual Reality (VR) is a possible solution, one must
develop a detailed and precise 3D urban model with existing
buildings, trees, and other objects. This could take a long time and
high cost. On the other hand, we perceived that invisible heights
from multiple and moving viewpoints can be evaluated using
Augmented Reality (AR) technology without making an
expensive 3D VR urban model. Therefore, the objective of this
research is to develop a new methodology for building an
invisible height evaluation system to preserve singular landscapes
using AR technology. Note this method is different from
superimposing the virtual designed architecture [2].
landscape to be preserved from the viewpoint field
plan
section
landscape composition
limit height
damaging element
viewpoint regulation area
Figure 1. Tall structures destroying landscape and invisible depth.
2 AR-BASED INVISIBLE HEIGHT EVALUATION METHOD
The main idea of the proposed method is as follows. The user can
observe the landscape object under consideration from multiple
viewpoints with a HMD and a video camera connected to a PC,
the AR system displays gridded virtual vertical scales which show
elevations from the ground level and which are located behind the
landscape object, on the HMD with overlapped real video images.
The user, then, captures the image and observes the maximum
height that does not disturb the landscape for each virtual vertical
scale. This process is iterated for various viewpoints, and
appropriate maximum height for each location behind the
landscape object is determined. Then, virtual vertical, maximum
height scale models that should not disturb the landscape are
generated and the user confirms whether the virtual objects are
surely invisible, while walking around the multiple viewpoints
and wearing the AR system.
A prototype system was developed based on the proposed
methodology using ARToolKit [3]. Since the scale of the AR
environment is very large, a 900x900mm marker was made.
Virtual vertical scale was developed as an OpenGL virtual object.
The shape of each scale is a rectangular solid which consists of
multiple 5m-depth colored layers. Each layer has different color
so that the user can read the height of the scale. In addition, the
scale object must be see-through. Otherwise the scales would
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 cover the target buildings and the user could not read the
maximum invisible elevation for each scale.

3 EXPERIMENT FOR HEIGHT ERROR ASSESSMENT

Average error of height (m)

We executed an experiment to measure the errors due to the
marker orientation and the distance between the marker and the
virtual object. The marker was set at the distance of 7m from the
video camera. Four existing real buildings which are visible from
the experiment site and of which precise location and dimension
data can be obtained were selected. Then, virtual 3D wireframe
rectangular solid models representing the edges of those buildings
were made using OpenGL and linked to the marker. The distance
between the marker and each building was 124m, 428m, 964m
and 2,851m (Figure 2). The orientation from the marker to the Distance between marker and 3DCG object (m)

video camera varied 0, 15, 30, 45, 60 degrees. A photograph of

the site for the case of 428m is shown in Figure 3. For each case, Figure 4. The relationship between the average height errors and
the error of each node of the angle between the actual video image the distance between the marker and the existing buildings
of the existing building and the wireframe virtual model located at
the building place was observed in terms of the number of pixels.
Figure 4 shows the relationship between the average height errors
in meter, converted from the pixels, and the distance between the
marker and the existing buildings for 5 different orientation cases.
The cases of 0 degree, i.e., the video camera was located just in
front of the marker, indicated large errors due to the marker
detection problem. This coincides the accuracy experiment results
done by Abawi et al. [4]. However, for other cases, including the Figure 5. All 3DCG scales on the gridded terrain model
farthest building, the average errors were less than 7m, which
implies the feasibility of this method.
60
45
30
15 marker 3 D
D object

video camera 7 m 124m428m964m 2,851m

Figure 2. Experiment settings

Figure 6. Captured images of a row of CG scales and real world.

Figure 3. Marker, real building, and virtual object (Distance: 428m)
4 APPLICATION EXPERIMENT FOR DEMONSTRATION
To demonstrate the proposed methodology and the developed
prototype system, an experiment was executed. Convention
Center and adjacent Gymnastic Hall of Osaka University were
selected as an experimental landscape preservation target. 50m
grid was drawn on the campus map and the elevation of each grid
was measured. Figure 5 shows the virtual scales on the gridded
campus terrain model. Then, the horizontally flat and open square
in front of the center and the hall was selected as a viewpoint as
shown in Figure 6. The marker was installed at the square. Figure
6 (left) shows a captured image of a row of virtual scales and real
image. Figure 6 (right) shows a captured image of a row of CG
scales of which height are invisible from the viewpoint.
5 CONCLUSION
In order to preserve singular landscape, regulation of height of
newly designed structures is necessary. A new method was
proposed for evaluating invisible height of future buildings from
multiple viewpoints using AR technology. A prototype system
was developed and the errors were evaluated. A sample
demonstration application was executed and the feasibility of the
method was confirmed.
Currently, we are investigating a multiple marker method to
enhance the accuracy and stability, and are improving the user
interface, especially the color-coded cuboids.
REFERENCES
[1] T. Higuchi, C. Terry (translated), The Visual and Spatial Structure of
Landscapes, MIT Press, 1988.
[2] Thomas, B.H., Augmented Reality Visualisation Facilitating the
Architectural Process, Mixed Reality in Architecture, Design and
Construction, 105-118, Springer, 2009.
[3] H. Kato, M. Billinghurst, Marker Tracking and HMD Calibration for
a Video-Based Augmented Reality Conferencing System,
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Augmented
Reality, San Francisco, CA, USA, 1999.
[4] Abawi, D.F., Bienwald, J., Dorner, R., Accuracy in Optical Tracking
with Fiducial Markers: An Accuracy Function for ARToolKit,
Proceedings of the 3rd ISMAR, 2004.

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