Patent ID: 7098913

Claim:
A method of enhancing distance awareness in a derived representation of terrain, comprising: selecting terrain for which a representation is to be derived, said terrain being viewable from a viewpoint; providing a data set corresponding to the selected terrain; deriving, from the data set, a three-dimensional representation of the terrain, said representation comprising a plurality of interconnected geometric elements that graphically communicate at least a relative elevation of the terrain with respect to the viewpoint; determining a distance between the viewpoint and a portion of the selected terrain; and attenuating geometric elements corresponding to said portion if said portion is beyond a predetermined distance from the viewpoint, said attenuation applied according to a function that maintains a minimum attenuation for portions of the representation closest to the viewpoint, increases, using a quantum change, to an intermediate attenuation value for portions of the representation at an intermediate distance from the viewpoint, and exponentially increases the attenuation applied to portions of the representation from the intermediate attenuation value at the intermediate distance, to a maximum attenuation value at a maximum visibility distance; and displaying the attenuated representation of the terrain.