30 Days in ActiveWorlds: Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World.

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30 Days in ActiveWorlds was a project aimed at documenting the development of a virtual environment from the beginning to end, the point where a plot of virgin land would develop into a community with a urban layout.

In the days long before Second Life it provided an early look at life, love, architecture and the threats of Armageddon from a terrorist group in a virtual world. It remains one of our favorite pieces of work to date:

If you would like to read the paper offline your can download - 30 Days in ActiveWorlds - Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World (pdf link)

Win a Copy of Virtual Geographic Environments

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We have just received our copies of Virtual Geographic Environments, the book has contributions by Jack Dangermond, Mike Goodchild, Mike Batty, Hui Lin and many others (including ourselves) and provides a unique guide to the current state of play in GIS and virtual environs.

The book is of note as its about to be taken on by ESRI so this current print will be a limited edition and we have two copies to give away.

All you have to do is email us the answer to this simple question:

What plugin was used in 3D Max to create the book cover?

Answers need to be received by 5pm GMT Friday 31st July.

Hint - you can find the answer here on digital urban.

Virtual geographic environments are essential to using GIS in design. For example, before a design for a city or landscape can be produced, an environment must be created through GIS. This is then fashioned into a form where users have access to it, first to enhance their understanding through exploration, and then to enable them to change various components in the effort to solve problems that can realize better designs. Only now, through the development of virtual city models and through new ways of enabling users to interact with geographic information using new screen technologies, is the point being approached where design is possible.

Virtual Geographic Environments, edited by Hui Lin and Michael Batty, collects key papers that define the current momentum in GIS and "virtual geographies." In some sense, such environments are the natural consequence of linking GIS to other technologies that deal with information, design, and service provision, and this will undoubtedly grow as it becomes ever easier to integrate diverse software and data across the Web.

The idea that geographic information can be both collected and made available through Web-based services, using Web 2.0 technologies that network many millions of people together, has formed a major research thrust in software development over the last decade.

The numerous contributions by leading members of the geospatial community to Virtual Geographic Environments illustrate the cutting edge of GIScience, as well as new applications of GIS with the processing and delivery of geographic information through the Web and handheld devices, forming two major directions to these developments. But the notion that these Web-based systems can be used to collect information of a voluntary kind through methods of crowd sourcing is also an exciting and widely unanticipated development that is driving the field. As these services gain ground, new business models are being invented that merge proprietary and nonproprietary systems and novel ways of integrating diverse software through many different processes of software development from map hacks to open system architectures.

Virtual Geographic Environments is published by Science Press, China (www.sciencep.com), 350 pages, hardcover. For more information, contact the responsible editors Peng Shengchao and Guan Yan, Science Press (e-mail: guanyan@mail.sciencep.com).

realXtend: SketchUp and Dynamic Shadows in a Virtual World

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The image above by Visibuild, a host and solutions provider for the AEC industries, is running in realXtend, currently in early phase alpha, it is a platform to watch. The main attraction for us here at digital urban of realXtend is the ability to import models via Revit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp, 3DMax etc, something that Second Life still lacks in any quick and easy form.

The technology demo below provides an insight into the possibilities:



With a notable rendering quality, combined with the dynamic shade and shadows, realXtend creates an interesting and comparably low-cost way to experience an architectural design.

If you are at all interested in Virtual Architecture we recommend a trip over to The Arch Network, set up by Jon Brouchoud it focuses on the communication of architecture via Virtual Worlds. We will be taking a closer look at realXtend while our development using Unity is put on hold (our Mac was stolen).

The Unity work will return as soon we get a replacement laptop sorted and our files restored via Time Machine.

See The Arch Network for more details on SketchUp models running in realXtend.

Virtual Geographic Environments Book Cover

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Last week we posted on our 'Greeble Earth' image as proof of concept for a book cover and by way of an update the proofs are back from the publishers as illustrated below:

We have a chapter in the book entitled 'The Renaissance of Geographic Information: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life', it should be available in the next couple of months and should you buy it at least your know how the cover was created...

See the Greeble Earth post for the original image and link to the tutorial.

Buy the Booklet: Digital Geography - Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments

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*UPDATE*

The Booklet is now Sold Out

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We are pleased to announce the availability of our booklet: Digital Geography - Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments. Printed in full colour the 10 x 8 inch booklet runs to 64 pages of insights and tutorials on Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Google Maps, Panoramas and Second Life.

With a focus on Neogeography, Web 2.0 and the various emerging techniques for urban visualisation the booklet has been written as a preview to the forthcoming Digital Urban 'recipe book' to be published fourth quarter of 2008.

The booklet is being sold at below cost price and is available now. For all those that have emailed to reserve copies, thank you, these are set aside and guaranteed for shipping soon as payment is received.


Priced at £9.99 (worldwide postage and packaging is free) it can be purchased direct via the Buy Now link using PayPal or any standard Credit/Debit card:

If you have any questions drop us a email or use the usual comment link.

We hope you enjoy the booklet.....

Visualising Geographic Environments: City 17

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Professor Ifan Shepherd of the University of Middlesex and Lestyn D Bleasdale-Shepherd of Valve presented an interesting talk at the International Conference on Developments in Visualization and Virtual Environments in Geographic Information Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong on the use of haptic feedback devices and games and their implications for virtual geographic environments.

Of note was the number of games begin developed on the XBox 360 based around Microsoft's Virtual Earth. We will have more on this over the coming days, it is looking like Virtual Earth will be the one to watch in the next six to twelve months with some notable developments due.




The use of the Xbox controller in games such as Half Life, based around City 17 and embedded above, opens up a whole new way to provide feedback to the user when visualising geographic information. Perhaps in the next 5 years we will be using games consoles more and more as machines geared towards both research and visualisation in the geographical sciences?

A higher resolution version of the movie can be downloaded here (wmv, 33Mb)

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

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Mike Goodchild of the University of California, Santa Barbara is one of the key commentators on virtual geographic environments (VGE’s). Below is a note based summary of Mike's presentation at the International Conference on Developments in Visualization and Virtual Environments in Geographic Information Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science – these are interesting times in the world of geography and visualization:

VGE’s are replica of real geographic environments and as such Mike rules out systems such as Second Life. VGE’s are complex and therefore slow and tedious to build. A database of approximately 3PB would be required to represented every human structure on earth with over 10% of UDP over the next 10 years. As such this is the problem, the cost is prohibitively high.

Strategies to limit cost on such a project – a true virtual earth – can be to:

1) Limit level of details
2) Resort to Geo-typical not geo-specific detail
3) Rely on Data acquisition technologies

Geo-typical facades can be used to rapidly construct virtual cities, this is of note when you are talking about every human made structure on earth.

The potential solution is:

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

A phenomena of the past few months in the geographic world – user generated content, also known as Collective Intelligence, Crowd Sourcing, Asserted Information and finally Neogeography. This amounts to the employment of millions of private citizens for no financial award – essentially Wikinomics.

Openstreetmap.org is a good example with all data contributed by volunteers, hand in hand are mashups in Google Earth, Maps and the 3D Warehouse in general – all user contributed geographic content.

This is made possible by the rise of Web 2.0 and Web Search Engines which are under estimated in their contribution. The ability to find geographic information is arguably as important as creating it.

With this information comes of course a change of accuracy, in general with the introduction of Google Earth and with it being the reference point for information input we can expect accuracy to be within 10 metres. This s a notable drop compared to GPS based data input or by more professional means. So relying on Google Earth is perhaps not the best way to proceed as an information base, it however one of the main tools of Neogeography.

National mapping agencies can be seen as being in decline which is perhaps why user generated content is on the rise. Combined with lowering costs of atmospheric sensors allowing small cheap devices to be built. Digital Dust is a unique term of small low cost digital sensors.

The Spatial Web is created by objects that know and report where they are – a network created by Digital Dust. In general there are three types of sensors networks, fixed, carried and human beings themselves. Bringing this back to Web 2.0 the combination of Digital Dust, and Human Beings - Citizen Science.

Citizen Science are networks of amateur observers who are possibly trained and skilled. This distinguishes general user generated content as content is sent in but partially aware personal.

In essence this brings VGI’s and ultimately a fully mapped, 3D digital earth down to user generated content - a Neogeographic World. Of note however is a reliance on technology and peoples motivation for collecting data. Self promotion is one part, every submitted piece of information can be user tagged and ownership maintained, a difference to traditional national mapping agency techniques.

VGI makes a very significant contribution on geography with a local focus. There are questions of trust, preservation and accuracy. Any person can put a name on a map, location or place, we are moving away from authority in the role of individuals in creating geographic information.

Is VGI a solution to the VGE construction problem? VGI is still predominately two-dimensional, but it holds huge potential.

See www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/vgi for more info.