Modeling Visibility through Visual Landmarks in 3D Navigation using Geo-DBMS Ivin Amri Musliman, Behnam Alizadehashrafi, Chen Tet-Khuan, Alias Abdul-Rahman Dept. of Geoinformatics, Faculty of Geoinformation Science & Engineer- ing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia. ivinamri@utm.my , behnam5us@gmail.com , kenchen14@gmail.com , alias@utm.my ABSTRACT: Today’s map navigation systems (from 2D to 3D) pro- vide direction instructions in the form of maps, pictograms, and spoken language. However, they are so far not able to support or has very limited access to landmark-based navigation, which the most natural navigation concept is for humans and which also plays an important role for upcom- ing personal navigation systems. In order to provide such navigation, in this paper, we discuss one of possible solution of modeling visibility in 3D navigation through visual landmarks using Geo-DBMS approach. The aim is to generate measurable visual landmarks along the focus map in a city model. The focus map is obtained from 3D analytical operation (3D buff- ering from the 3D shortest path analysis result) function within Geo- DBMS. Detailing to the generated measurable visual landmark’s façade, an implementation of dynamic pulse function is then applied. The tech- niques for choosing specific landmarks and generating the focus maps are shortly presented and their functionality is explained. We tested the pro- posed approach by using Stuttgart 3D city model. Finally, the paper pro- vides outlook on ideas for future deployment and research. KEY WORDS: Visual landmarks, focus map, dynamic pulse functions, 3D navigation, 3D buffer.