TrailView: An Interactive 3D Hike Planning Tool

Planning outdoor trips is a challenging task and requires the analysis of multiple variables. Factors that affect the planning of an enjoyable hike or cycling tour, especially through scenic landscapes, include weather, day time, seasonal sunlight, scenic views, facilities, as well as terrain morphology. We thus present a web-based solution to this task, TrailView, that integrates realistic 3D graphics and interactive features to support outdoor trip planning. TrailView goes beyond prior solutions by not only providing immersive first-person view experiences but also incorporating guidance and visual context for the planning and preview of hikes or bicycle rides in the mountains. TrailView seamlessly integrates crowd-sourced data to enhance 3D visualization with routing, topography, and points of interest and supports user decision-making via interactive 3D and 2D map views, scenery preview, predicted light and weather conditions, as well as sunrises and sunsets from a first-person perspective. We evaluated the performance of our tool by recording the frametime while the camera follows along a planned hike. We show interactive times for intuitive route navigation and planning through composite 2D and 3D views, targeted for both computers and modern smartphones directly in their browser.