10 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

Okay, the original got lost in the sever upgrade, so here it is again (not in the last place because I'm quite proud on having worked on this)

The City of Apeldoorn has launched Virtueel Apeldoorn, a 3D environment where visitors can fly around in a 3D model of the city.

The reason to launch this model was an extensive urban renewal project, the 'Kanaalzone'. This is a project that will span several decades and in order to communicate this with the citizens, a choice was made to use the most modern technology available.



The 3D environment is based upon the Virtuocity software developed by Cebra. Red Geographics was involved in the data processing required for this project, as well as modelling several of the important buildings that can be seen.

This is free for anybody to check out. You do need a 'good' computer with a 'good' 3D card and a high-speed internet connection. There's a plug-in that needs to be downloaded, works only for IE on Windows I believe. If anybody wants to give it a try, PM me and I'll send you some instructions.

[margaret]

wow...! I enjoyed spending the morning as a stupid american tourist. what can I learn about urban renewal here? do the building colors signify planned vs. existing structures? which buildings did you work on?

[Hans van der Maarel]

wow...! I enjoyed spending the morning as a stupid american tourist. what can I learn about urban renewal here? do the building colors signify planned vs. existing structures? which buildings did you work on?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, the outrageously brightly colored bits are the two major renewal projects. It's currently an old industrial site with some residential mixed in, the 3D environment shows them as planned (parks, residential). There's also going to be an 'underworld' where you can actually walk around in on street level. That will have more detail w.r.t. existing vs planned/proposed. There will be a lot more opportunities for interactivity there.

The 'regular' buildings come in 2 colors: grey (industrial) and brown (residential/retail). It's a very basic classification, done by making an overlay of the building polygons with the land-use polygons from the standard roadmap.

As for the buildings I did, here's the highlights. The large yellow ribbon in the first two images is the contour of the built up area.


Het Loo, former Royal Palace, now a museum.


La Tour, big highrise in the north.


Old City Hall (left) and the new City Offices


The Great Church

[DaveB]

As for the buildings I did, here's the highlights. The large yellow ribbon in the first two images is the contour of the built up area.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow, nice work on those buildings!

[Hans van der Maarel]

[takes bow]

Thank you.

Mind you, it's about 6-8 hours of work per building. We used photos taken on-site for the textures, so a lot of Photoshop editing was needed.

[frax]

what is the target audience for this... ?

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hugo,

The target audience is the people who live in that immediate area and whose surroundings are going to be affected, as well as the rest of the town's population.

[frax]

It would be interesting to hear any experiences later on, on the impact of this work - if people really used the service. I am personally a bit sceptical, it mostly sounds like a nice gimmick from a technical perspective. The requirements (IE, pluging, 3d-card, bandwidth) probably doesn't increase the impact...

Have they set up kiosks running this? That would probably increase the reach.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Have they set up kiosks running this? That would probably increase the reach.

Not that I know of, but it's likely that local libraries and community centers would be set up with demo pc's for that.

[frax]

another question from the devil's advocate dept:

does the 3d display communicate something important that wouldn't be possible to display in 2d? Maybe the views and heights of proposed development?

[Hans van der Maarel]

another question from the devil's advocate dept:

does the 3d display communicate something important that wouldn't be possible to display in 2d? Maybe the views and heights of proposed development?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, as well as the general look and feel of the area. There's a more detailed ground-level model for one of the development areas, but that's not open to the public yet.

Another consideration was that they wanted to have more flexibility than a traditional physical model.