How to write a huge 3D-GIS-database?

At the Institute for Computer Grapics at the Technical University Graz we are doing research on a 3D-GIS for big cities (eg. Vienna with 1.8 Millions inhabitants). We want to store all data that is needed to offer photorealistic 3D-views from any point of the city. One problem (among several others) is how to store the huge amounts of data: traditional 2D-GIS-data, 3D object descriptions of all buildings, photo textures etc. A traditional relationale database doesn't seem appropriate to store 3D relationships of objects. ? Does anyone know about literature / papers to this topic (huge 3D ? databases)? ? ? Does anyone know who else is doing research in this area? ? ? Does anyone know which database programm we should try? We are ? currently working with Silicon Graphics machines. My questions may seem a little bit naive. However, I am really new in this topic and started work for a thesis just some weeks ago. Every help is appreciated. I would prefer if you could mail me directly - I will post a summary to comp.infosystems.gis. Thank you! Michael Kofler <kofler@icg.tu-graz.ac.at> ===================================================================== = Institute for Computer Graphics - Graz University of Technology = =-------------------------------------------------------------------= = Muenzgrabenstrasse 11, A-8010 Graz, Austria = = Tel.: (43) (316) 84 17 66 Fax: (43) (316) 84 63 04 = =====================================================================