Patent ID: 7456779

Claim:
In a radar system having a radar imaging display for use in an aircraft, a method of creating a three-dimensional rendered image of a terrain surface on the imaging display, the method comprising the steps of: scanning the terrain surface with a radar beam transmitted from the radar system so as to illuminate areas of the terrain surface; receiving a radar return signal from each illuminated area, the return signal having data indicative of the azimuth, elevation, and range of each illuminated area; processing the data in the return signal so as to transform the return signal data into a Cartesian coordinate system with X, Y, and Z coordinates; triangulating the X and Y coordinates corresponding to each illuminated area so as to create a mesh of triangles representing the terrain surface, each of the triangles in the mesh being defined by a vertex triplet; adding 3D imaging information, selected from the group consisting of at least one of grey scale shading information and coloring information, to each triangle in the mesh, based on the amplitude of the radar return signal from the coordinates represented by each vertex in the triplet and the value of the Z coordinate at each vertex in the triplet, so as to form a 3D rendered image of the terrain surface; and displaying the 3D rendered image on the imaging display.