http://here.net/
Now, at first glance, it seems like your standard mapping service. Search for McDonald's and it gives you McDonald's. Search for directions and it gives you the fastest route. Search for your house and it shows it to you.
But then you switch the Map View (top right of the map area) to 3D. And have your brain explode from the awesomeness.
You pan around a bit and you notice that, in addition to the satellite imagery being incredibly clear and bright, the SIDES OF THE BUILDING are textured. And, if you click the little trapezium symbol at the bottom to pan up, YOU CAN SEE THE SIDES. Rotate the "dot" on the circle at the bottom and YOU CAN SEE THE OTHER SIDES.
I'm only guessing, but I think what they've done is combined Nokia's (very high-res) street view imagery (which you can see if you zoom all the way in), and combined it with the clear and bright satellite imagery, to create models of every single building in the city. I'm using London, which has street view on this mapping software, but other cities like Bristol, Newport, Cardiff etc don't have street view, and thus don't have this awesome 3D map thing.
Anyway, this is probably the most awesome thing I've seen. The reason it's awesome is that, if I'm right, they don't have to go to the trouble of manually creating models for every building in a city, and manually texturing them all. They do it through algorithms that match satellite imagery with street-level imagery. Amazing stuff.
Now all we need is for someone to take all this 3D data and turn it into a giant Counterstrike map...
Now, at first glance, it seems like your standard mapping service. Search for McDonald's and it gives you McDonald's. Search for directions and it gives you the fastest route. Search for your house and it shows it to you.
But then you switch the Map View (top right of the map area) to 3D. And have your brain explode from the awesomeness.
You pan around a bit and you notice that, in addition to the satellite imagery being incredibly clear and bright, the SIDES OF THE BUILDING are textured. And, if you click the little trapezium symbol at the bottom to pan up, YOU CAN SEE THE SIDES. Rotate the "dot" on the circle at the bottom and YOU CAN SEE THE OTHER SIDES.
I'm only guessing, but I think what they've done is combined Nokia's (very high-res) street view imagery (which you can see if you zoom all the way in), and combined it with the clear and bright satellite imagery, to create models of every single building in the city. I'm using London, which has street view on this mapping software, but other cities like Bristol, Newport, Cardiff etc don't have street view, and thus don't have this awesome 3D map thing.
Anyway, this is probably the most awesome thing I've seen. The reason it's awesome is that, if I'm right, they don't have to go to the trouble of manually creating models for every building in a city, and manually texturing them all. They do it through algorithms that match satellite imagery with street-level imagery. Amazing stuff.
Now all we need is for someone to take all this 3D data and turn it into a giant Counterstrike map...