Patent ID: 7415356

Claim:
A method in a computing system for presenting an aerial image, comprising: collecting a plurality of source aerial images each covering a particular geographic region; combining the source aerial images into a three-dimensional image that is directly accessible via spherical coordinates and covers a union of the geographic regions covered by the source aerial images; projecting the three-dimensional image about a standard parallel of approximately 37° North latitude onto a developable surface; transforming the projection into a planar image; for each of a grid of bounding rectangles within the geographic region covered by the three-dimensional image, the projection, and the planar image, each bounding rectangle being defined in terms of polar coordinates: converting each set of polar coordinates defining the bounding rectangle into rectangular coordinates in the planar image, and creating an image section by copying the contents of the planar image contained by the bounding rectangle defined by the rectangular coordinates; receiving display requests each specifying a bounded area using at least one set of spherical coordinates; and for each received display request: retrieving any image section whose bounding rectangle intersects the specified bounding area, forming an image result corresponding to the specified bounded area from the retrieved image sections, and presenting the image result to a user.