While editing the podcast today I realized I did a horrible job of describing Microsoft’s new features. In my defense, I was talking about it as I received an error in 2 different browsers as I tried to get to Bing Maps and then trying to decide whether or not to bail on that news [...]

I can’t pass up a chance to post a cool interactive 3D visualization, like the NY Times map of the Vancouver Olympic venues. They’re using Intermap’s elevation data, and imagery by Digital Globe, Province of British Columbia and TerraMetrics via Google Earth. The 3D visualization starts with an overview of the Olympic venues, including Vancouver [...]

Before there was Avatar and even before Fisher-Price Viewmaster, there was stereoscopy or stereo photographs that presented scenes in life-like three dimensions similar to a Viewmaster. A recent book on one set of Stereoscopic photos of 1850’s village life titled “A Village Lost and Found”. It is a picture book that evokes the Victorian [...]

As many of you know, we have been involved in research related to geovisualization, 3D immersive virtual environments, and 3D virtual worlds for quite a while, and we’ve talked about some of the issues and opportunities a number of times on the podcast. One of the biggest obstacles to a compelling VR environment is getting [...]

I have been remiss in not doing any diary entries for awhile, but I have been feverishly working trying to get my demo XNA application ready for the ESRI UC presentation. Finally today, I think I got the last bit of functionality on my list working, so I am pretty excited and crossing my fingers [...]

Over the years we have seen many geovisualization technologies emerge, each with their own ups and downs (pun, sadly, intended). All of the approaches, however, can be broken down to two styles: 1) flythrough visualizations, where the creator has setup a prescribed flight path that the viewer can not escape (often distributed as a [...]

My dissertation proposal defense is finally over and, since I passed, it’s time to get back to work and really get the functionality on the Spatial Experience Engine ramped up. During my presentation and in the Q-and-A with my committee afterward, I kept coming back to the issue of interaction in the virtual world. I’ve [...]

This cool video shows how programmer Shamus Young created a procedurally-generated 3D nighttime cityscape. The program generates everything every time it runs, and doesn’t use any pre-stored textures or art assets. He gives a great step-by-step explanation of how he did the project in a series of blog posts.

Via FlowingData

So, this past week has been a flurry for me, as I’ve had to schedule and then reschedule my PhD dissertation proposal defense. But, finally it seems that we are set for next Tuesday morning, so now I have some time to catch up on my diary entry. I was contemplating what to write [...]

This week’s entry is a little late, as I am burning the midnight oil trying to populate my virtual town with at least basic models so I can see what my performance is going to be with the full complement of landscape features and physics systems running. When we did the first generation of the [...]