Navigation system with three-dimensional display

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The drawbacks of prior art navigation systems are overcome, in accordance with the principles of the invention, by a navigation system which displays a realistic view of the territory ahead and clearly shows the direction to be undertaken by the vehicle.
Preferably, the view ahead is three-dimensional.
In one embodiment of the invention, the navigation system includes a vehicle position data generator for generating signals indicating the location of the mobile vehicle, and a scene information provider which generates information representative of the layouts of local environs at various locations and a display.
A real environment scene generator, using position data acquired from the vehicle position data generator, acquires information from the local scene information provider representative of the local scene at the vehicle position indicated by the position data.
The real environment scene generator generates location pertinent information which is used by the display to display a scene depicting the locality setting in a tree dimensional format.
The real environment scene generator also generates direction information which is used to display directions overlaid on the displayed local scene.
The displayed scene and overlaid directions are constantly updated to reflect the changing locality as the position of the vehicle changes.
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