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🆕Product data
Last updated
Last updated
OS 3D mesh provides a single continuous structure formed from triangular faces and textured using colours from source aerial imagery. The mesh is created using proprietary software and can be supplied in several formats to be loaded into 3D data processing software, such as a GIS or a gaming engine. We can supply data in the ESRI 'slpk' format or the Skyline 3DML format and are working on supplying OGC (Cesium) 3D tiles.
Both ArcGIS Pro and QGIS support the use of 3D Mesh data for geospatial processing; however, support and documentation is lacking when compared to 2D raster images and geospatial vectors. Specialist software may be necessary for some applications involving 3D mesh data, although support for the use of 3D data is steadily increasing.
The mesh supplied by this product is created from high-resolution aerial images initially captured as part of the ongoing programme to update the topographic data in the OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD). These aerial images are captured from flight paths that facilitate the creation of overlapping images.
Standard flight plans on OS NGD imagery capture flights provide 80% overlap in the direction of flight and 30% overlap at the sides (between flight strips). The resulting images allow image matching software to create the 3D mesh models used for this product.
The aerial imagery data used to create the 3D mesh is available for the whole of Great Britain and is updated on a rolling basis every 3 years. For the beta product, a 3D mesh for each area will be created to order from this source imagery. Areas previously created will be available to customers as needed.
If OS 3D Mesh proves to be successful, a future 3D mesh product will be created to cover the whole of Great Britain and will be continuously updated as new imagery becomes available.
The OS 3D Mesh beta is an experimental product and will not be updated.
The positional accuracy of the 3D mesh is dependent upon the accuracy of the underlying imagery, the ground control used, and the software used to create it. The overlapping images used to generate the 3D mesh are captured from an overhead (nadir) perspective and have a nominal ground sample distance (pixel size) of 15cm by 15cm.
All imagery is processed using measurements captured from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (for example, GPS and Galileo) from ground control points with a positional accuracy finer than 10cm in the X, Y, and Z dimensions.
OS has undertaken ground surveys using total stations (theodolites which measure both angles and distances) and other terrestrial surveying equipment, in order to collect a set of checkpoints which can be measured against the OS 3D Mesh.
The positional accuracy of the OS 3D mesh data is estimated as 1.1m RMSE. We will do extensive testing to verify this and we may be able to increase the accuracy in future products, by using higher-accuracy ground control point information.
The imagery used to create the mesh was originally captured for use in the update of topographic features in the OS NGD (National Geographic Database) and related products. We have re-used the imagery to produce the OS 3D Mesh beta product, but, as it was captured for other purposes, please note that it is not optimised for mesh creation.
