ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches to visibility analysis in 3D spaces that have been proposed in the fields of urban and landscape studies, and especially in archaeology. It discusses recent advances in 3-dimensional visibility analysis by reviewing studies from the fields of geography, urbanism, architecture, and archaeology. Terrain visibility analysis has met great popularity within landscape studies, particularly in the field of Geographical Information Science (GIS). More recently, Engel and Dllner have proposed an automatic visual analysis of 3D landscape scenes that seeks to produce mapped visual data for visual control and public safety assessments in modern environments. Patterns of visual communication during ritual performance are also indicative of the relations among interacting members of a religious congregation, who are senders, receivers, and observers. The textures of targeted objects can be imported into a GIS, and visual data can be summarized and mapped in a variety of different ways using map algebra operations, simple scripts, and batch processes.
