Building The Virtual Philadelphia

from the 3D-modeling-is-everywhere... dept

It appears that 3D virtual modeling is suddenly a hot topic. There were two different companies at DEMO showing of 3D scanners (with very different implementations) and now the NY Times is running a story about a company that is building 3D models of cities much more efficiently than has been done in the past. It still sounds like something of a chore, however, involving a van driving around the city and a plane flying overhead (the van apparently caught the attention of curious Secret Service agents in Philly). Perhaps they should team up with the Amazon/A9 team that's already sending out drivers to snap photos of various cities. Of course, all of these efforts to model or photograph cities makes you wonder about maintenance. Places can change fairly rapidly, and this data will quickly become out of date. If places need to be rescanned on a regular basis, that's going to get seriously expensive.
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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2005 @ 6:03am

    Just waiting...

    I remember that the Soviets would purposely put out maps for their own people that were completely wrong, in order to thwart feared invaders (US). I'm waiting for some Homeland Security dweeb to pop up and say the same about this, that it's dangerous, it will lead to attacks, that it would only be in the hands of the government, etc.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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