Duncan Smith, an up and coming PhD student at CASA, has been putting Land eXplorer through its paces these last few weeks. In the spirit of the centre he kindly produced a blog post and a movie of his thoughts:
The aim of digital cities is to combine photorealistic urban visualisations with rich analysis tools for built environment professionals and the public. We’ve seen some exciting advances towards this goal recently, but we’re not quite there yet. Right now it’s difficult to make the link between the analysis and database functions of GIS software, and the photorealistic visualisations that 3D graphics software provides. 3D GIS applications like ESRI ArcScene are a step in the right direction, but don’t yet offer the 3D graphics power, or web publishing functions, that ideally we’d like to see.
The software developer 3D Geo GmbH, a spin-off of the Hasso Platter-Institute for system technique (HPI), has recently released their LandXplorer software to allow the creation of 3D city models that combine GIS functions with photorealistic graphics. LandXplorer was used to create the excellent Berlin and Dresden 3d models published in Google Earth. 3D Geo are also a key developer in the CityGML standard for 3D urban data. We’ve been testing LandXplorer Studio and are impressed with its features.
The YouTube movie embeded below shows some highlights:
Very large terrain datasets can be viewed and explored in 3D. We managed to load in all of Greater London at 4m resolution, and our Stratford data at 1m resolution. It is straightforward to import shapefiles of building outlines to create basic 3d city models on top of this terrain layer. The building models can be classified with attributes as the Stratford example shows. You can skip between the 3D attribute view and phototextured views, with the software handling aerial photography well and allowing the importing of textured buildings in 3ds format.
Overall LandXplorer is an innovative piece of software that brings functional digital cities a step closer. Currently it doesn’t offer much in the way of spatial analysis, but 3D Geo as ESRI have recently become integration partners so this should improve in future releases.
Take a look at the Land eXplorer home page for a free viewer and a 'try before you buy' demo.
Thanks Duncan...
Glad to see you back to your mapping reality best!
ReplyDeleteOut of interest... is there anything that us readers can do to help your efforts, or is reading this enough to show that the numbers of interested people are there?
Thanks for the comment Steve :)
ReplyDeleteIts always nice to get tips on news etc as running the blog can take up a lot of time to find information, so thats always helpful.
I guess word of mouth helps as well, we are quite a niche blog with smallish readership so any links to us help a lot...
Apart from that hopefully its a good read and as long as someone is reading thats all that matters (?) .....
Spot the mistake:
ReplyDeleteThe software you mentioned is spelled "LandXplorer", so some users may find it confusing if you state something wrong.
Nevertheless, quite interesting seeing you testing the software. What about the video? Have you done it with the software itself or another tool?
You should check out Overwatch's Urban Analyst. Its a 3D plug-in to ArcGIS that provides real-time 3D analytics, on-the-fly urban model generation, and publishing.
ReplyDeletethanks for your opinion towards the latest news of city modelleing. I have to admit that I find the delievered views disappointing. I don`t think that you could use any of the models for the purpose of marketing or plannung support. The 3D pioneer maila-push based in Darmstadt/Germany provides apps with modelled building and floors, both real photo-realistic. Functions like "before-after" simulations or displaying different planning concepts in one 3D realtime systems are available. With this apps people really get an idea of "tomorrow`s perspective". The homepage doesn`t tell the whole story so far. Check out a project cd!
ReplyDeleteLandXplorer and the 3dGeo company are now part of Autodesk. So in connection with other geospatial products, like Map3d, Civil3d, Ravit, Studio Max and others....LandXplorer is developing as a tool for urban design and will be able to mature for simulations, analysations and visualization for a city modeling as present and befor it comes real. So the mentioned homepage above has changed to www.autodesk.com/landxplorer
ReplyDeleteHow to import shape files from google sketchup to landxplorer? Is there any way to do so?
ReplyDelete