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The essence of GIS is to query, analyze, process, and display various information based on visual representation of the real world, helping people make decisions scientifically. After more than 10 years' development, the 2D GIS technologies have gained wide recognition of their advantages in managing businesses and improving productivity, and are applied in dozens of industries in China. 2D GIS uses (x, y) to represent a spatial location; whereas 3D GIS uses (x, y, z) to represent a spatial location. Compared to 2D GIS, 3D GIS not only provides 3D visual cognition, but also provides 3D spatial analyses and functions. With the developments in computer technologies and the advanced applications of 2D GIS industry, people have become eager to represent the real world using 3D GIS. 3D GIS also has increasingly significant advantages and is irreplaceable in fields such as combat control in military, electronic sand tables and terrain simulations, digital cities, real estate display, analyses and simulations of environmental and meteorological subjects, urban micro-climates, air pollution modeling, geology and underground pipelines, etc.
Nowadays, 3D GIS is more than a name representing the trend and fashion. It has become practical and is being industrialized. The fast-developing 3D GIS technologies will certainly lead to great innovations in the new generation GIS technologies. However, the data models in 2D GIS are simpler, more abstract, and more synthesized compared to 3D data models. There will be a long period when neither 2D GIS alone or 3D GIS alone can meet the high application requirements in the future. Therefore, to develop GIS software with 2D and 3D integrated, instead of with 3D GIS alone, is the right direction for developing GIS software. It is not comprehensive enough to name such GIS software 2D GIS software or 3D GIS software. Thus a new concept is introduced here--3D GIS.
In this section, the following contents about SuperMap iServer 3D are introduced: