New York, NY test of MapQuest 360 View. While some images lack clarity, the orange proximity bubbles are useful.
From the MapQuest blog:
360° View provides fantastic panoramic views (360° horizontally and 160° vertically) of any given image within the 360 View coverage area (initially 30 cities and 15 suburbs across the United States with more to come) … Best of all, MapQuest 360 View “just works” without requiring any non-standard 3rd party player downloads.
All Points Blog notes that the source of the imagery is Immersive Media, makers of the Dodeca2360 we’ve discussed before. Microsoft’s new Bing Maps is pretty impressive with its accuracy and bird’s eye view all over the US, but as James Fee points out, 360° View does not require special installs like Silverlight to work:
Take that Bing Maps and your 3rd party player download. MapQuest works without any Silverlight player to get in your way… except of course it uses a 3rd party player called Flash. I suppose this plays into Adobe’s assertion that their 3rd party player download is included by default in many browsers by default.
With Google Maps tripping down the quality scale, while adding 3D cities functionality and increasing the quality of its StreetView, this seems like the logical next step for MapQuest.
Graphics city, geospatial, immersive media, mapquest, maps
I’m waiting for the SC09 Opening Address to begin (“The Rise of the 3D Internet”, by Intel’s Justin Rattner) and on the opening video reel they have a fantastic video from Sheldon Brown of the Experimental Game Lab at UCSD of a project called “Scalable City”.
Scalable City creates an urban/suburban/rural environment via a data visualization pipeline. Each step in this pipeline builds upon the previous, amplifying exaggerations, artifacts and the patterns of algorithmic process. The results of this are experiences such as prints, video installations and interactive multi-user games and virtual environments.
Throughout these artworks, a variety of computer concept buzzwords take on physical form. Wallowing in them provides equal measures of delight and foreboding, creating a vision of cultured forms that we are rapidly creating. The project neither indicts nor embraces this future, but offers an extrapolation of its algorithmic tendencies, heightening one's awareness of the aesthetics of the underlying logic as it becomes the determinant of much of our cultured existence.
The video is impressive, and you can see screenshots and the trailer on his website.
via Scalable City by Sheldon Brown.
Graphics, Science art, city, sc09, ucsd
A website serving up a browsable map of Hong Kong, similar to Google Maps, shows a beautiful isometric view with buildings, foliage, and labeled streets. It only has 4 levels of detail but it really sets a new standard for what web-maps should be.
map for hong kong,map of hong kong city,e map of hong kong,3D map for hong kong,public transportation map,public transportation map_Edushi.
Graphics, Science city, map
Milwaukee has taken the initiative to digitally re-create their downtown area and link it with computer simulations and databases to create a virtual world where they can experiment and test modifications.
For example, architects can remove buildings from Virtual Milwaukee and add new ones to see how they will fit within the cityscape. Interactive virtual tour guides could be added to the simulation to escort visitors around town. A green technology company could add wind farms or solar cells to existing areas and simulate the results.
Two versions of the “Virtual Milwaukee” are open to the public today: One in Discovery World’s HIVE virtual immersion chamber, and another in a portable inflatable 3D theater run by The Elumenati.
via ‘Virtual Milwaukee’ depicts city in 3-D – JSOnline.
Hardware, Science cave, city, government, virtual worlds
VizWorld.com 
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