Patent ID: 7173636

Claim:
A method for generating a presentation of a region-of-interest in an elevation data representation for display on a display screen, comprising: calculating a displacement height for at least one point in the representation falling within a lens, the lens being defined over a basal plane and having a focal region for the region-of-interest at least partially surrounded by a shoulder region defined by a shoulder function, by inversely scaling a vertical height of the point from a viewpoint for the presentation by a magnification for the lens; if the point is within the shoulder region of the lens, scaling the displacement height by a value of the shoulder function evaluated at a value given by a distance between a projection point in the basal plane of a line drawn through the viewpoint and the point and a closest point on a perimeter of the focal region as projected onto the basal plane, the distance being scaled by a distance between the closest point and an intersection point on a perimeter of the shoulder region in the basal plane of a line drawn through the closest point and the projection point; and, displacing the point by the displacement height to generate the presentation.