High Definition (720p) Historic London Panorama Movie

Tweet

Sometimes you sit back and think to yourself, wow this is makes it all worth while. Panoramas on their own can be impressive but when you render them in High Definition and link them to Mozart's Requiem Mass in D minor the movie raises the bar on what we thought possible.

As we noted previously our movies were rendered in DVD quality, or 720x480 resolution. Using a custom profile it is now possible to export via the simple to use (and more importantly rapid to export) Windows Movie Maker at 1280 x 720, or 720p High Definition.



The movie in High Definition features The Chapel of Peter and St Paul by Wren, Southwark Cathedral, The Painted Hall by Wren and St Giles in the Field.

You can download the movie here (80Mb, WMV), we recommend you have your headphones on or sound system operational as the sound track enhances the flythrough.

Any comments on this would be most welcome...

'There' - The 'There' Metaverse

Tweet

Following our First Steps in Second Life post we have created a similar movie documenting our entry into the Virtual World system known as 'There'



In the same way as Second Life, 'There' now has free registration so you can log into the environment without having to type in your credit card details. 'There' is described as 'an online getaway where you can hang out with your friends and meet new ones--all in a lush 3D environment that's yours to explore!' As the movie illustrates 'There' has a more cartoony look than Second Life and is all the better for it. There is also the option of 'Premium Membership' for $9.95 which includes Voice Chat and various other upgrades, although the free account is quite adequate for first steps and getting to know the world.

As ever with these worlds we are interested in importing our own objects, we are looking into this and if we manage it will of course post details along with another movie. 'There' is free and if you look beyond the 'fun' element and into the possibilities for collaborative visualisation and architecture then it offers a number of interesting options.

City Life - First Steps in the Render Engine

Tweet

The interesting part of the game City Life is its rendering engine and the ability to import your own buildings direct from 3D Max.

We had to mention that first as loading a game up during office hours has been greeted with calls of 'he gets paid to play games' and 'I thought only 10 year olds used video games'. You would of thought researchers, especially in this field, would know better but sometimes you just have to shrug and realise that your on to something that others can't see.



If we can load some of Virtual London models into City Life and use the game engine to automatically populate it and allow real-time flythroughs then the 'game' suddenly becomes interesting. The movie above illustrates our first steps in City Life and should provide an insight into the visualisation possibilities.

Now if this render engine linked with Google Earth? This is how we would like to zoom into cities with the locations populated with avatars - a mix of Google Earth/City Life and Second Life.. thats the killer application for city visualisation.

Photorealistic Buildings and Collaborative Architecture - ActiveWorlds

Tweet

Active Worlds (AW) is a 3D virtual reality environment in which we have carried out a number a projects involving collaborative architecture. Within ActiveWorlds users, represented as Avatars, can chat with one another or build structures and areas from a selection of pre-made objects.

The unique feature of ActiveWorlds, when for example compared to Second Life, is the ability to import objects into the environment. This allows photorealistic buildings, modelled as part of Virtual London, to be added to the object set and placed/moved/deleted by individuals or groups working on a collaborative build.



The movie above illustrates some sample houses, typical of the new build UK housing stock, being imported and manipulated in ActiveWorlds. The system is database linked so in theory it could be linked to a Geographical Information System (GIS) to create a Multi-User GIS. As CAD is increasingly becoming group/collaborative based, there is potential in linking CAD/GIS and a multi-user Avatar based system. With regards ActiveWorlds, linked with say ESRI ArcMap, it should (in theory) also be quite straight forward.

Virtual London - The Flythrough Movie

Tweet

Below is the flythrough movie of Virtual London circa 2005 by CASA. Created using a mix of high resolution panoramas, ray tracing and of course the 3D model it provided a phase one demonstrator. The models extent now extends to the M25.

- Note as with most of our movies they now contain audio -



Research work continues on rapid photomodelling and of course we have it in Google Earth but are still working on the licensing issues...

Any thoughts or comments on the flythough are of course welcome..

Visualising Las Vegas - Second Life

Tweet

Following our own first steps in Second Life, documented in the video below, it is worth expanding this to look at the creation of real world cities.



The movie below by Sufis Angel, demonstrates the construction, using a collaborative tool set, of Las Vegas. Sadly Second Life does not allow the user to import their own models when compared to, for example, ActiveWorlds. It does however allow texture import, a set of facade photographs could easily be imported from say our London dataset to construct sections of the city in Second Life.



As has been mentioned before if you merged Second Life with Google Earth you would have a killer application...

If you have Second Life installed you can teleport direct to Las Vegas

Extracting Geometry from a Painting - 3D Art/Virtual London circa 1616

Tweet

Maybe it just us, but we sometimes look at paintings and think wouldn't it be great to flyinside that scene. So, using a section of Visscher's panoramic view of London circa 1616, we put in lines of perspective and traced around the main features.



As the movie above shows you can then create a 3D flythough or indeed a full 3D model. We also put the painting into ActiveWorlds with avatars a while ago and its kind of interesting to not only have 3D art but also see people walking around a picture.

This would seem to be of use for multimedia applications in galleries etc... its neat but seems to be one of things that sits on our hard drive and never gets out of the lab.. still least now its on YourTube.. Soundtrack is Beethoven, Sonata nr.8 in G-Major btw.

Comments as ever welcome...

London 3D Air Pollution Movie

Tweet

At CASA, in association with the Environmental Research Group at Kings College London, we have created a 3D map of London, overlayed on our 3D Model.



The aim of the movie is to demonstrate how, compared to a traditional 2D map, it is easier to gain a 'sense of location and place' and thus communicate data with a 3D surface. The whole 2D/3D thing is debatable of course... you can view a mix of 2D and 3D views on the Air Pollution website and some more info and contact details on the CASA news item.

3D London Tube Map

Tweet

A while ago we built a map of the London Tube network.. its neat but to be honest not all that much use (?). Somewhere on our hardrive is a real location of the map in 3D as well, we will hopefully dig that back out in a few days. You can view the current 'classic' London Tube Map below:



The reason for the post? We were going to add in depth data to produce a real representation of the tube network. Sadly due to security fears (which are understandable to say the least) this looks like it wont happen. Still, it would of made a neat flythough...

A higher res version can be found can be viewed from here (23Mb). Note the movie uses the DIVX codec.

Adobe's Virtual World - City Visualisation and Learning

Tweet

Before the sad demise of Adobe Atmosphere, a Virtual Environment system which had a lots of potential, we created a Virtual London world. The world was hosted on the London Grid for Learning and aimed at providing information on the city direct to classrooms with teachers notes etc. A clip of the 'photo gallery' section of the world can be seen below.



The movie clearly demonstrates how such software can be used to construct worlds which aid the learning and teaching process. Sadly Adobe announced the closure of Atmosphere on the launch day of our project which was not to be honest all that well timed.

To date there has not been another system that allows one to import 3D models, although Pelican Crossing is one we are watching closely.