A physical model for screen space distribution of 3D marks on geographical information systems

In this paper, a novel approach to the on-screen reordering of geolocated marks for geographical information system is proposed. This self-organizing set of marks, called Non-Overlapping Marks, relies on a real-time simulation of a physical model of point masses. This work presents the challenges of displaying a high number of such georeferenced features on 2D and 3D maps, and the goals that the final mark distribution should achieve. It is described how the proposed model uses electrostatic and elastic forces, among others, to improve the marks readability. Moreover, the proposed system has been fully implemented on a virtual globe framework. The final part of this work addresses experimentally the margins of usability of the proposed system.