A large amount of image datasets are publicly available online through the web map service standard. The contents of the datasets span from satellite imagery of the earth and other planets of our solar system to various scientific data.

This thesis presents an implementation of a planet renderer streaming high resolution image and height data from online datasets. The planet renderer uses a level of detail technique based on nodes connected by a quad tree data structure. The level of detail is determined by the size of the nodes in screen coordinates which ensures a sufficient texel to pixel ratio of the image data and a reasonably consistent polygon size in screen space.

The project will be implemented in Uniview which is an application developed by SCISS AB and is primarily used in planetarium domes to visualize the Universe. Being able to visualize the high resolution image data and scientific measurements in a dome environment will provide the viewers a greater perspective of the data.