Patent ID: RE44550

Claim:
A method of providing a pictorial representation of space-related data of a selectable object, the representation corresponding to the a view of the object by an observer with a selectable location and a selectable direction of view comprising: (a) providing a plurality of spatially distributed data sources for storing space-related data; (b) determining a field of view including the an area of the object to be represented through the a selection of the a distance of the observer to the object and the an angle of view of the observer to the object; (c) requesting data for the field of view from at least one of the plurality of spatially distributed data sources; (d) centrally storing the data for the field of view; (e) representing the data for the field of view in a pictorial representation having one or more sections; (f) using a computer, dividing each of the one or more sections having image resolutions below a desired image resolution into a plurality of smaller sections, requesting higher resolution space related space-related data for each of the smaller sections from at least one of the plurality of spatially distributed data sources, centrally storing the higher resolution space related space-related data, and representing the data for the field of view in a the pictorial representation; and (g) repeating step (f), dividing the sections into smaller sections, until every section has the desired image resolution or no higher image resolution data is available.