# Application of 3D Virtual Reality Sensor in Tourist Scenic Navigation System

Authors: Fei Deng
Journal: Journal of Sensors
 (2022)

---

## Abstract

In order to solve the application of 3D virtual reality technology in the practical development of scenic spot navigation system, this paper proposes a scenic spot navigation system based on multimedia technology and component geographic information system (ComGIS). The system takes Visual Basic 6.0, MapObjectst2.4, and GeoLOD 4.0 as the development platform and develops the tourism navigation system based on component GIS and multimedia technology, which manages nonspatial data with access 2003. The results are as follows: the path length designed by the system in this paper and the three compared navigation apps is 1.56 km, respectively. Although the path designed in this paper is not the shortest, the number of scenic spots passed by this path is up to 6; The accuracy of the navigation system designed in this paper is 97.2%, about 5% higher than that of similar navigation APPs; 55.2% of users felt that the navigation system designed in this paper was excellent. The results show that the system can basically meet the needs of tourists, hoping to promote the information construction of tourism.


---

## Body

## 1. Introduction

Tourism is an industry that provides tourists with a variety of services. With the in-depth development of tourism and the progress of computer information processing technology, tourism demand is gradually showing a trend of diversification and personalization [1]. The special requirements for the intuitiveness, vividness, and service of tourism information data are gradually improving. In the past, the tourism information obtained through traditional maps and other methods is too single, which not only can not meet the requirements of tourists for the intuitiveness, vividness, and richness of tourism information data, but also lacks the spatial analysis and application of geographic information [2].Therefore, it is very necessary to explore new ways of tourism information acquisition and transmission. As an industry with strong spatial dependence, the distribution of tourism resources, tourism facilities, and even tourists themselves have important information related to geospatial location. The tourism navigation system should have the ability to effectively manage spatial data, spatial element attributes, and multimedia data so that tourists can easily realize the retrieval and query of three kinds of information [3].The gradual development and maturity of GIS, multimedia, and other related technologies provide theoretical and technical basis and guarantee for the development of tourism navigation system [4]. To develop tourism and realize the successful leap from a large tourism country to a powerful tourism country, we must promote the healthy and rapid development of tourism with advanced information technology, scientific management means, and new expansion ideas [5].Although the tourism industry has shown a good development momentum in recent years, and its position in the national economy is constantly improving, the tourism industry in this region started late, the overall strength is weak, the advantages of tourism fist products are not obvious, and its own management system and various relevant supporting facilities need to be improved. Once the scientific planning guidance and development, product integration, relevant industrial facilities, and regional integration are completed, and the level of tourism information technology is improved, the tourism industry is expected to become a new growth point of the national economy and promote the rapid development of the whole local economy.


## 2. Literature Review

With the gradual development of GIS, computer, and other related technologies, especially the promotion of geographic information system (GIS), high and new technologies have been widely promoted and applied in tourism development, tourism management, tourism marketing, tourism transportation, and tourism services, which has greatly improved the economic benefits, work efficiency, and service quality of tourism and provided a reliable guarantee for the establishment of tourism service system. In the construction of tourism informatization abroad, Denmark, the Netherlands, and other countries have implemented relatively early, among which the more famous ones are Austria Rohr information system and Switzerland appenzer information system. The tourism information system in this period is composed of detailed information databases of tourism resources, tourism facilities, and geographical environment, but there are differences in data organization structure, data coding, information content, information source, and technical level.At present, many countries have established information systems based on different information technologies. Tourism service information systems for different users and some different information systems have been networked to realize the sharing of tourism resource information [6].After years of development, great progress has been made in the research of tourism GIS abroad, and GIS technology is combined with encounter technology and GPS (global positioning system) technology. The integration of multidisciplinary and multiprofessional knowledge such as communication technology has greatly promoted the development of tourism industry. The rapid development of modern tourism puts forward higher requirements for tourism information technology. The interactive relationship between information technology and tourism industry has also become a hot spot of great concern to foreign scholars. Many relevant studies have appeared in some academic journals [7]. Khatib and others discussed the application of information technology in various tourism industries [8]. Yang and others further discussed the strategic position of information technology in tourism [9]. Kozorez and others discussed the application of information technology in tourism from the analysis of tourism distribution channels [10].In China, the research of tourism information system started relatively late, which began in the early 1980s. In order to adapt to the new situation, China’s tourism industry has accelerated the application research of GIS and other technologies in tourism information system from two aspects of theory and practice and has made some achievements. Zhao and others research on MapX based tourism information system [11]. Vlacic and others research on the design and implementation of tourism geographic information system [12]. Wang and others studied the tourism scenic spot information system based on GIS [13]. China has initially established a set of “microcomputer national tourism resources information system.” Based on the completion of the comprehensive survey of national tourism resources, the system systematically classifies the resources, adopts the method of systematic analysis, and establishes a tourism resource information system composed of geographic information basic database, tourism resource database, tourism service database, tourist statistics database, and database, which provide a foundation for the computerization, data sharing, and exchange of tourism resource information management. However, these studies are still very imperfect. The information construction of China’s tourism industry is still in the primary stage. In many aspects of relevant technical research, it is in the initial and exploratory stage. The relevant technical theory is not mature enough, and the research on information collection, processing, and analysis technology is still very weak. Many originally designed functions and schemes cannot be well applied in practice due to various reasons. There are still many problems in the development and application of the system.Based on this, this paper studies the application and research status of tourism navigation system at home and abroad and expounds the advantages of component GIS technology and multimedia technology in tourism navigation system. This paper introduces GIS and component technology, multimedia technology, spatial data, shortest path algorithm, and other technologies and basic theories related to system development. It sets the system development objectives and analyzes the user needs, feasibility, and data sources of the system. This paper determines the technical route, development method, and implementation environment of the system: The functional module and database of the tourism navigation system are designed.


## 3. Research Methods

### 3.1. 3D GIS

Component technology has gradually become the industry standard, which is easy to use, so that nonprofessional ordinary users can also develop and integrate GIS application system and promote the popularization of GIS. The emergence of component GIS makes GIS not only a professional analysis tool for experts, but also a visual tool for ordinary users to manage geographic related data. The browser of GIS data is much larger than its user and owner (or producer). The three are star pyramid shaped. As shown in Figure1, ComGIS enables the user and browser of GIS data at the bottom of the pyramid to analyze, browse, and publish the data easily [14].Figure 1
Comparison of GIS users.As we all know, in the decades of development of two-dimensional GIS technology, with the rapid development of computer software and hardware and relational database, two-dimensional GIS technology has become more and more perfect and has incomparable advantages in the analysis function of geographic information.Three-dimensional GIS is a computer system that inputs, stores, edits, queries, spatially analyzes, and simulates geographic information objects with three-dimensional geographic reference coordinates on the basis of two-dimensional GIS. The biggest advantage of 3D GIS is that it can truly reproduce the geographic information in the real environment, such as terrain and landform. Using 3D GIS technology, DEM and texture data can realize the generation function of realistic terrain and landform and real-time roaming function. For some functions that can only be realized by 3D GIS technology, they must also be realized by 3D GIS technology. For example, in order to more intuitively understand the results of spatial query and analysis and improve the level of spatial analysis, it is necessary to restore the 3D spatial relationship and carry out perspective display [15].Combining two-dimensional GIS and three-dimensional GIS, two-dimensional GIS and three-dimensional GIS operate alternately, rather than a single one. Giving full play to the advantages of both is an economic and practical idea, which is the purpose of this study [16].


### 3.2. System Development Mode

According to its content and function, geographic information system can be divided into two basic types: tool geographic information system and application geographic information system. Tool GIS is a general GIS, that is, GIS tool software package. It has the general functions and characteristics of GIS, such as Arcinfo, MapInfo, MAPGIS, and GEOSTAR. It provides users with a general GIS operation platform or development tool. This kind of GIS generally has no geospatial entity. Users carry out further design and secondary development based on it according to their own needs and certain application purposes, so as to solve practical application problems. The applied geographic information system is a geographic information system designed according to the needs of users to solve one or more kinds of practical problems, including thematic geographic information system and regional integrated geographic information system [17].With the expansion of GIS application field, the development of application-oriented GIS is becoming more and more important. How to develop an economic, practical, and needed application-oriented GIS system is a very concerned problem for GIS developers. There are three modes: independent development mode, host secondary development mode, and secondary development mode based on GIS.To sum up, the independent development is too difficult. The host secondary development is limited by the script language provided by the GIS platform, and the GIS component development mode combines the advantages of the component development mode of GIS platform software and visual development platform and has become the mainstream direction of GIS application development.


### 3.3. Technical Route of the System

The system adopts the technology of taking Visual Basic 6.0 as the front-end development tool and integrating MapObjcts and realizes the application of the system by using the access of Visual Basic 6.0 to the database, the support of SQL (structured query language), and the support of Geo-dataset of map objects to the integrated development environment and SQL. The overall architecture of the system is shown in Figure2.Figure 2
Overall system architecture.


### 3.4. System Database

Data organization and management is the basic core of system construction, the data basis for the realization of various functions of the system, and the key factor for the success of system construction [18], which directly affects the practicability and efficiency of the system. In this tourism navigation system, the design of system database includes the design of spatial database, attribute database, and multimedia database. The design and establishment of database is a very important and arduous task in the construction of tourism navigation system. In the organization and management of system database, how to organize, store, and manage all kinds of data according to a certain structure in order to improve the efficiency of system information query and processing is the key of system database design. In this system, the GIS data management method of mixed management mode of file and database system is adopted, that is, the entity vector data structure is used to express the spatial entity data, the spatial entity (graphics) data is managed by the serialized file, and the attribute data adopts the relational database to connect the data to associate the graphics and attribute data. The data flow chart of tourism navigation system based on component GIS and multimedia technology is shown in Figure 3.Figure 3
System database flow chart.The spatial database is mainly used to store the spatial graphic data of the salt pond. MapObjects uses the concept of map layer. Each map layer is composed of geographical objects of the same nature, and a layer as a theme corresponds to a layer entity table. Each layer is represented by specific symbols and corresponds to different data sources. A map layer corresponds to a DBF database, and several map layers are superimposed to form a complete map [19].Attribute data is an important feature of GIS, which is mainly used to describe the characteristics of spatial entities, such as the name, category, quality, and quantity of entities. Attribute data itself belongs to nonspatial data, but it is an important data component in spatial data. Attribute data is also called statistical data or thematic data. The attribute database of this system mainly includes attribute data of tourism resources, tourism services, and tourism facilities [20, 21].Multimedia data is a kind of special thematic data; what methods should be adopted to organize and manage multimedia data effectively and how to combine it with attribute database are very important links. Establishing effective association between spatial databases is the key to the application of multimedia technology in GIS. The multimedia data in the tourism navigation system is mainly used for information query, so as to increase the expressiveness of the most scenic spots, more vividly and intuitively reflect the content of scenic spots, and strengthen the publicity of tourism industry. Multimedia data need not be stored directly in spatial database.Spatial database, attribute database, and multimedia database are independent of each other, but in the process of use, spatial data and nonspatial data are inseparable, and their association must be realized [22]. When designing the data structure, the method of adding public key fields is adopted, that is, each spatial entity in the spatial database has a unique identification number, and there is also an attribute corresponding to the identification number in the relational data table structure. The two correspond with the public key ID and finally realize the two-way query and retrieval of graphic data and attribute data [23].


## 3.1. 3D GIS

Component technology has gradually become the industry standard, which is easy to use, so that nonprofessional ordinary users can also develop and integrate GIS application system and promote the popularization of GIS. The emergence of component GIS makes GIS not only a professional analysis tool for experts, but also a visual tool for ordinary users to manage geographic related data. The browser of GIS data is much larger than its user and owner (or producer). The three are star pyramid shaped. As shown in Figure1, ComGIS enables the user and browser of GIS data at the bottom of the pyramid to analyze, browse, and publish the data easily [14].Figure 1
Comparison of GIS users.As we all know, in the decades of development of two-dimensional GIS technology, with the rapid development of computer software and hardware and relational database, two-dimensional GIS technology has become more and more perfect and has incomparable advantages in the analysis function of geographic information.Three-dimensional GIS is a computer system that inputs, stores, edits, queries, spatially analyzes, and simulates geographic information objects with three-dimensional geographic reference coordinates on the basis of two-dimensional GIS. The biggest advantage of 3D GIS is that it can truly reproduce the geographic information in the real environment, such as terrain and landform. Using 3D GIS technology, DEM and texture data can realize the generation function of realistic terrain and landform and real-time roaming function. For some functions that can only be realized by 3D GIS technology, they must also be realized by 3D GIS technology. For example, in order to more intuitively understand the results of spatial query and analysis and improve the level of spatial analysis, it is necessary to restore the 3D spatial relationship and carry out perspective display [15].Combining two-dimensional GIS and three-dimensional GIS, two-dimensional GIS and three-dimensional GIS operate alternately, rather than a single one. Giving full play to the advantages of both is an economic and practical idea, which is the purpose of this study [16].


## 3.2. System Development Mode

According to its content and function, geographic information system can be divided into two basic types: tool geographic information system and application geographic information system. Tool GIS is a general GIS, that is, GIS tool software package. It has the general functions and characteristics of GIS, such as Arcinfo, MapInfo, MAPGIS, and GEOSTAR. It provides users with a general GIS operation platform or development tool. This kind of GIS generally has no geospatial entity. Users carry out further design and secondary development based on it according to their own needs and certain application purposes, so as to solve practical application problems. The applied geographic information system is a geographic information system designed according to the needs of users to solve one or more kinds of practical problems, including thematic geographic information system and regional integrated geographic information system [17].With the expansion of GIS application field, the development of application-oriented GIS is becoming more and more important. How to develop an economic, practical, and needed application-oriented GIS system is a very concerned problem for GIS developers. There are three modes: independent development mode, host secondary development mode, and secondary development mode based on GIS.To sum up, the independent development is too difficult. The host secondary development is limited by the script language provided by the GIS platform, and the GIS component development mode combines the advantages of the component development mode of GIS platform software and visual development platform and has become the mainstream direction of GIS application development.


## 3.3. Technical Route of the System

The system adopts the technology of taking Visual Basic 6.0 as the front-end development tool and integrating MapObjcts and realizes the application of the system by using the access of Visual Basic 6.0 to the database, the support of SQL (structured query language), and the support of Geo-dataset of map objects to the integrated development environment and SQL. The overall architecture of the system is shown in Figure2.Figure 2
Overall system architecture.


## 3.4. System Database

Data organization and management is the basic core of system construction, the data basis for the realization of various functions of the system, and the key factor for the success of system construction [18], which directly affects the practicability and efficiency of the system. In this tourism navigation system, the design of system database includes the design of spatial database, attribute database, and multimedia database. The design and establishment of database is a very important and arduous task in the construction of tourism navigation system. In the organization and management of system database, how to organize, store, and manage all kinds of data according to a certain structure in order to improve the efficiency of system information query and processing is the key of system database design. In this system, the GIS data management method of mixed management mode of file and database system is adopted, that is, the entity vector data structure is used to express the spatial entity data, the spatial entity (graphics) data is managed by the serialized file, and the attribute data adopts the relational database to connect the data to associate the graphics and attribute data. The data flow chart of tourism navigation system based on component GIS and multimedia technology is shown in Figure 3.Figure 3
System database flow chart.The spatial database is mainly used to store the spatial graphic data of the salt pond. MapObjects uses the concept of map layer. Each map layer is composed of geographical objects of the same nature, and a layer as a theme corresponds to a layer entity table. Each layer is represented by specific symbols and corresponds to different data sources. A map layer corresponds to a DBF database, and several map layers are superimposed to form a complete map [19].Attribute data is an important feature of GIS, which is mainly used to describe the characteristics of spatial entities, such as the name, category, quality, and quantity of entities. Attribute data itself belongs to nonspatial data, but it is an important data component in spatial data. Attribute data is also called statistical data or thematic data. The attribute database of this system mainly includes attribute data of tourism resources, tourism services, and tourism facilities [20, 21].Multimedia data is a kind of special thematic data; what methods should be adopted to organize and manage multimedia data effectively and how to combine it with attribute database are very important links. Establishing effective association between spatial databases is the key to the application of multimedia technology in GIS. The multimedia data in the tourism navigation system is mainly used for information query, so as to increase the expressiveness of the most scenic spots, more vividly and intuitively reflect the content of scenic spots, and strengthen the publicity of tourism industry. Multimedia data need not be stored directly in spatial database.Spatial database, attribute database, and multimedia database are independent of each other, but in the process of use, spatial data and nonspatial data are inseparable, and their association must be realized [22]. When designing the data structure, the method of adding public key fields is adopted, that is, each spatial entity in the spatial database has a unique identification number, and there is also an attribute corresponding to the identification number in the relational data table structure. The two correspond with the public key ID and finally realize the two-way query and retrieval of graphic data and attribute data [23].


## 4. Result Analysis

### 4.1. Route Avoidance of Navigation System

In order to test the performance of the navigation system designed in this paper, this paper uses several similar products to compare with this system. For the same starting point and end point, the optimal route design is carried out, and the results are shown in Figure4.Figure 4
Comparison of optimal path design.As shown in Figure4, the designed path lengths of the system in this paper and the three compared navigation apps are 1.56 km, 1.33 km, 1.74 km, and 1.22 km, respectively. Although the path designed in this paper is not the shortest, the number of scenic spots passed by this path is 6, which is the largest among the comparison systems, proving the superiority of the navigation system designed in this paper [24, 25].


### 4.2. Accuracy of Navigation System

This paper also uses several similar products to compare with this system. For the same starting point and ending point, route design and check the accuracy of navigation. The results are shown in Figure5.Figure 5
Navigation accuracy.As shown in Figure5, the accuracy of the navigation system designed in this paper is 97.2%, and the accuracy of similar comparison navigation apps are 92.6%, 86.7%, and 85.2%, respectively.


### 4.3. Overall Evaluation of Navigation System

The navigation system designed in this paper is given to the experimenters for trial. The navigation system is scored from five aspects: interface simplicity (J), operation convenience (C), navigation accuracy (D), three-dimensional scene authenticity (S), and use feeling (G). After collecting the data, the overall score (T) is obtained. The calculation formula is as follows:(1)T=J∗0.15+C∗0.1+D∗0.3+S∗0.25+G∗0.2∗100%.A score of 85-100 is excellent, 70-85 is good, 55-70 is average, and less than 55 is poor. The results are shown in Figure6.Figure 6
Overall evaluation of use.As shown in Figure6, 55.2% of users felt that the navigation system designed in this paper was excellent, 28.4% felt good, 12% felt average, and 4.4% felt poor.


## 4.1. Route Avoidance of Navigation System

In order to test the performance of the navigation system designed in this paper, this paper uses several similar products to compare with this system. For the same starting point and end point, the optimal route design is carried out, and the results are shown in Figure4.Figure 4
Comparison of optimal path design.As shown in Figure4, the designed path lengths of the system in this paper and the three compared navigation apps are 1.56 km, 1.33 km, 1.74 km, and 1.22 km, respectively. Although the path designed in this paper is not the shortest, the number of scenic spots passed by this path is 6, which is the largest among the comparison systems, proving the superiority of the navigation system designed in this paper [24, 25].


## 4.2. Accuracy of Navigation System

This paper also uses several similar products to compare with this system. For the same starting point and ending point, route design and check the accuracy of navigation. The results are shown in Figure5.Figure 5
Navigation accuracy.As shown in Figure5, the accuracy of the navigation system designed in this paper is 97.2%, and the accuracy of similar comparison navigation apps are 92.6%, 86.7%, and 85.2%, respectively.


## 4.3. Overall Evaluation of Navigation System

The navigation system designed in this paper is given to the experimenters for trial. The navigation system is scored from five aspects: interface simplicity (J), operation convenience (C), navigation accuracy (D), three-dimensional scene authenticity (S), and use feeling (G). After collecting the data, the overall score (T) is obtained. The calculation formula is as follows:(1)T=J∗0.15+C∗0.1+D∗0.3+S∗0.25+G∗0.2∗100%.A score of 85-100 is excellent, 70-85 is good, 55-70 is average, and less than 55 is poor. The results are shown in Figure6.Figure 6
Overall evaluation of use.As shown in Figure6, 55.2% of users felt that the navigation system designed in this paper was excellent, 28.4% felt good, 12% felt average, and 4.4% felt poor.


## 5. Conclusion

With the continuous improvement of people’s material and cultural living standards, returning to nature has increasingly become an ideal, and tourism is facing new development opportunities. For the development of tourism, unique tourism resources are very important, but tourism publicity and related high-quality services are also one of the essential conditions.With the popularization and application of multimedia technology and GIS technology, the perfect combination of multimedia technology and GIS is applied to tourism, which opens up a new way for the development of tourism navigation system and has become a new research hot spot in tourism. It overcomes the defects of the traditional tourism navigation system, such as the lack of visual and intuitive expression ability of query results.The results are as follows: Through in-depth investigation and analysis, serious damage and exploration, and feasibility study, overall system design, database design, program compilation and debugging, a tourism navigation system based on component GIS and multimedia technology is established. The system function is basically realized, and the interface is friendly and concise. Users who know a little about basic computer knowledge can operate the system.



---

*Source: 1112261-2022-07-01.xml*