|
The Archives
-
03.31.10Micazook Aims to Bridge Virtuality, Google MapsMicazook, a maker of 3D games based in the UK and Poland, will soon launch a beta of its "mirror earth" 3D virtual world, currently called Project X but soon to be launched under a proper name. The company claims, despite having launched its site, that Project x "is probably the planet's largest MMO virtual world to date." It's probably best to ignore that hyperbole and instead focus on what the world aims to do: "to make mirror earth possible as a viable world and to map the entire planet earth in 3D." According to the Micazook blog, the MMO will be ...
-
02.06.09Standards-Based Mirror World Under DevelopmentDamon at the Metaverse One blog recently wrote about X3D-Earth, a new 'extensible 3D (X3D) Earth project' under development by the Web 3D Consortium. X3D is intended to be used by just about everyone. The X3D Web site describes the mission: "The X3D-Earth project will create a standards-based 3D visualization infrastructure for visualizing all manner of real-world objects and information constructs in a geospatial context." It is funded by the National Science Foundation and its suppoters include the World Wide Web Consortium and the Open Geospatial Consortium. The flip-side to X3D is Google Earth (GE), which is the most widely-used mirror world ...
-
11.16.08A Sense of Place: Mapping in Second Life and Virtual WorldsI often regret that I wasn't around for the days of telehubs and a contained land mass: Second Life is too vast now, teleports make it too easy to bounce around, and private islands mean that the majority of the Grid isn't a continuous space. Over on the OpenSim grids, you get a sense of place: it's still small enough to wander around and meet all your neighbours. The map of SL isn't much of a map really. Show it to a cartographer and they'd scorn it: it's an information dashboard, maybe, showing land for sale or green dots, but ...
-
11.13.08Ancient Rome Virtually Reborn on Google EarthGoogle Earth has added an ancient layer with the launch of virtual Rome. According to one report: "The latest addition in Google's product release frenzy graphically recreates Rome as it looked 1688 years ago under Emperor Constantine. Users can take a virtual stroll around 6700 buildings, crafted in 3D in cooperation with the Rome Reborn project - a virtual reality project that saw UCLA, the University of Virginia, the Politecnico di Milano and others create a 3D model of the city in 320AD." But the operative word, I think, is "stroll". Because you can't. You can cam. Strolling implies avatar, which implies ...
-
06.06.08Google Earth Unbound – Is THIS Virtual Earth?Google Earth (GE) recently announced that it would make a plug-in to allow GE to run in a browser (thus far, for Windows only). GE expects to see its mashups on the Web, in its words, "with many more applications than ever before." GE is careful to note that the entire application is not being converted into a browser, but only that the plug-in will run, which will enable developers to create applications and enable UI features. While the plug-in will not have all the features of the full GE client, it is still a favourable development for developers who can ...
-
03.20.08Archaeology and Google Earth: Building Past Virtual WorldsAn archaelogist has created GEPublish, a "real hack" which integrates 3D models with Google Earth and creates a virtual environment with the added feature that it shows processes over time. As he explains the work: One of our main goals is to have something like a 4D GIS system (which means real 3D models with complex geometry + textures + the possibility to use time attributes) to show architectural or urban development and future plans: processes in time and space... So when GE integrated COLLADA support we were very excited that we can now publish complex reconstructions. The 3D polygons that were ...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.