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 Places can change fairly rapidly, and this data will quickly become out of date.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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