terrainr

Executive Summary

terrainr is an R package designed to make it easier to produce immersive virtual environments in the Unity video game engine from real-world spatial data. By providing functions for data access and retrieval, wrangling and format transformation, and import into Unity, terrainr improves the speed and reproducibility of developing such visualizations. With the ability to process spatial data in both raster and vector formats, combine data from multiple sources, and rapidly iterate on visualization components, terrainr makes it easy for researchers to develop IVEs from real-world data and apply these visualizations to new problems and domains.

People

Key Papers

  • Hruby, F., Ressl, R., & Borbolla del Valle, G. de la. (2019). Geovisualization with immersive virtual environments in theory and practice. International Journal of Digital Earth, 12(2), 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2018.1501106
  • Keil, J., Edler, D., Schmitt, T., & Dickmann, F. (2021). Creating immersive virtual environments based on open geospatial data and game engines. KN Journal of Cartography and Geographic Information, 71, 53–65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42489-020-00069-6

Outputs

  • Paper: Mahoney et al., (2022). terrainr: An R package for creating immersive virtual environments. Journal of Open Source Software, 7(69), 4060, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.04060
  • Documentation: https://docs.ropensci.org/terrainr/
  • Workshop “Producing Interactive 3D Landscape Visualizations in Unity Using Terrainr R Package” at the 2021 Visual Resources Stewardship Conference materials: https://mikemahoney218.github.io/2021-10-19-vrs-workshop/2021-10-19-vrs-workshop.html
  • Talk “terrainr: Spatial Data Access and Visualization in R.” at the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners slides: https://mikemahoney218.github.io/2021-09-08_esip/esip.html#2, recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWZ7QQMr_AQ
  • Talk “Virtual Environments: Using R as a Frontend for 3D Rendering of Digital Landscapes” at useR! 2021 slides: https://mm218.dev/user2021 recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2202&v=tbt8ZsHm5eA
  • Workshop “Accessing the USGS National Map and Making 3D Maps with terrainr” (with Colleen Nell (lead author) and Lindsay Platt) at USGS Center for Data Integration materials: https://www.mm218.dev/cdi/cdi.html.
  • Talk “terrainr: Landscape Visualizations Using Data from the National Map” at USGS National Geospatial Technical Operations Center

Other References