Virtual flight over El Hierro island

Abstract

This work presents a virtual flight simulator that allows a precise and smooth real-time experience on the “El Hierro” island (Canary Islands). Development tasks and results are presented that demonstrate the stages of the project with the major features developed within the work. Our system uses Crystal Space 3d engine, a free (LGPL) and portable Development Kit that allows the efficient implementation of virtual scenarios on the computer. Although the flight simulator focuses on a particular real-world terrain –El Hierro island- other targeted zones are easily adapted to the development, increasing so the capability to extend the work to other zones of interest. Hierro Virtual, rather than putting it as a competitive tool compared to Google Earth, which is a remarkable platform known by its performance and features, is a proposal that tries to overcome some critical points like treatment and realism of ortophotos, accuracy and consistency in the geographical information.