I've posted on technologies available right now that are better than existing consumer (that is to say, free) geographic visualization tools/toys. Here is something similar for 3d buildings. This project from Edinburgh Uni's EPCC (where I was an intern many years ago) is a demonstration of high detail 3d modeling for town planning. There are also movies on the site.
While we are at it, here is another government funded project mapping London's cityscape.
Note that this is non-Google data imported in to Google Earth which is essentially being used as a rendering engine.
One of the big issues I see looming on the horizon is how data like this is distributed and discovered. Should it be consolidated and licensed (as in the Google Earth model), should it be made a specialized commodity that people have to down load on to their desktops to use, or should it be distributed and automatically (and opportunistically) integrated into data smart clients. This seems like a data web issue to me.
I have been looking for an application that would allow us to be able to integrate our own 3d model of a community into a google maps (it has yet to be built). So we can use it to market the property. The london photo above (with textures) is exactly what I would need.
Posted by: Carson | August 28, 2007 at 05:08 PM