Network Rail: New Lines Promo

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Network Rail, the operator of Britain’s rail infrastructure, has undertaken a study to examine the strategic case for New Lines and help shape the future of our railways.

The key aim of the New Line project is to meet future demands for additional rail capacity from passengers and freight users linking London and Scotland in under two hours. Normally such plans are illustrated with more traditional 'transport like' movies, this time however Network Rail have pulled out all the stops and produced an extremely impressive promo:



Sure the movie doesn't actually communicate any information, but hey we like all the effects thrown in, especially the liquid being spilled. Style over substance? Definitely, but we really like it...

London Tube Lines: Growing the Network

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Below is a quick draft movie of our latest work with the London Tube map. The movie was created to test the concept of 'growing' the tube lines with the thought of having they grow according to the date of construction in a future version. Various bugs now need to be fixed (Jubilee Line is the wrong colour - oops) and stations have to be tweaked etc but we thought we would put it online for those interested:



A new movie will appear soon as its ready along with a tutorial if anyone would like to know how its done :)

City Timelapse - Cartoon Clouds and Distant Skyline

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The timelapse above was created using a HD webcam housed on a roof in Camden Town, London - note the full moon rising above the cityscape towards the end of the clip. An image was grabbed every 5 seconds to create the movie. The movie was processed using the 'Cartoon' option in After Effects. Compared to the original movie (embedded below) it notably picks out the distant skyline. If you pause the movie then you can see that single images work well, as a timelapse we are not quite so sure but its an interesting test, the original is below:

London TimeLapse - Full Moon from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Music by Ghostlight over at mp3unsigned.

Want to make your own timelapse? - See our full tutorial.

Small Life in Cologne

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Ok we know we are meant to be on 'vacation' and away from the blog/work, but this clip is simply too good not to post:

Small Life in Cologne from Christoph Schaarschmidt on Vimeo.

The tiltshift / timelapse movie was created by Christoph Schaarschmidt a media-technology student from the University of Applied Sciences in Mittweida, Germany.

A Couple of Days Off

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A quick post just to say that at this quiet time of year we are taking a couple of days away from the office and more than likely the blog as well due to lack of internet access.

That said, we have some exciting new projects starting September 1st and various software reviews lined up, the blog will be back end of the week/start of the next week.

Till then, we have over 1250 posts so feel free to have a rummage around...

New paper: NeoGeography and Web 2.0

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The current issue of the Journal of Location Based Services is a special edition on Neogeography edited by Sanjay Rana and Thierry Joliveau.

Apart from the editorial there are three papers of particular note in this special issue. The first is by Michael Goodchild, entitiled "NeoGeography and the nature of geographic expertise" The abstract of the paper is below:

"NeoGeography has been defined as a blurring of the distinctions between producer, communicator and consumer of geographic information. The relationship between professional and amateur varies across disciplines. The subject matter of geography is familiar to everyone, and the acquisition and compilation of geographic data have become vastly easier as technology has advanced. The authority of traditional mapping agencies can be attributed to their specifications, production mechanisms and programs for quality control. Very different mechanisms work to ensure the quality of data volunteered by amateurs. Academic geographers are concerned with the extraction of knowledge from geographic data using a combination of analytic tools and accumulated theory. The definition of NeoGeography implies a misunderstanding of this role of the professional, but English lacks a basis for a better term. "

The second article is by Marcus Foth et al., entitled "The Second Life of urban planning? Using NeoGeography tools for community engagement" The abstract of the paper reads:

"The majority of the world's citizens now live in cities. Although urban planning can thus be thought of as a field with significant ramifications on the human condition, many practitioners feel that it has reached the crossroads in thought leadership between traditional practice and a new, more participatory and open approach. Conventional ways to engage people in participatory planning exercises are limited in reach and scope. At the same time, socio-cultural trends and technology innovation offer opportunities to re-think the status quo in urban planning. NeoGeography introduces tools and services that allow non-geographers to use advanced geographical information systems. Similarly, is there a potential for the emergence of a neo-planning paradigm in which urban planning is carried out through active civic engagement aided by Web 2.0 and new media technologies thus redefining the role of practicing planners? This paper traces a number of evolving links between urban planning, NeoGeography and information and communication technology. Two significant trends - participation and visualisation - with direct implications for urban planning are discussed. Combining advanced participation and visualisation features, the popular virtual reality environment Second Life is then introduced as a test bed to explore a planning workshop and an integrated software event framework to assist narrative generation. We discuss an approach to harness and analyse narratives using virtual reality logging to make transparent how users understand and interpret proposed urban designs".

While the third paper is by myself, Andrew Crooks, Maurizio Gibin; Richard Milton; and Michael Batty entitled "NeoGeography and Web 2.0: concepts, tools and applications" in which we explore the concepts and applications of Web 2.0 through the new media of NeoGeography and its impact on how we collect, interact and search for spatial information. We argue that location and space are becoming increasingly important in the information technology revolution. To this end, we present a series of software tools which we have designed to facilitate the non-expert user to develop online visualisations which are essentially map-based. These are based on Google Map Creator, which can produce any number of thematic maps which can be overlaid on Google Maps. We then introduce MapTube, a technology to generate an archive of shared maps, before introducing Google Earth Creator, Image Cutter and PhotoOverlay Creator. All these tools allow users to display and share information over the web. Finally, we present how Second Life has the potential to combine all aspects of Web 2.0, visualisation and NeoGeography in a single multi-user three-dimensional collaborative environment.

If you are interested in reading our paper and can not access it (access through Universities should be free of charge), drop us an email via our contact page.

Thanks go to gisagents.blogspot.com

The Brooklyn Typology Project: Urban Omnibus

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The Urban Omnibus is an online creation of the Architectural League to create a new kind of conversation about design and New York City. A fascinating website in itself they have also just posted a great write up of the The Brooklyn Typology Project.


The Brooklyn Typology Project provides photographs and data describing Brooklyn, you can browse by housing type, density, housing units per acre, decade, date of build, neighborhood or simply by location. We have just spent a good half hour rummaging around the site and especially like the 'industrial' section under housing type, its a neat way to explore residential density.

You can read the full write up on Urban Omnibus...

CryEngine 3: Global Illumination Demo

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Crysis showed what was possible in terms of using game engines for architectural visualisation. The third version of the engine has just been demoed at SIGGRAPH 2009 -



Take a look at incrysis.com for more footage and information, we cant wait to give it a try...

Thanks go to Ben for emailing us the link, work, interviews and deadlines have annoyingly got in the way this week of the blog, considered our hands slapped for missing the Crysis update and a whole day yesterday without a post...

Edge of Sydney CBD: Stereographic Timelapse

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We were about to try out a similar concept ourselves here at digital urban with an old 'one shot lens' and a HD video camera. Peter Murphy however has gone one step further with a dual Canon 5d with 10.5mm fisheye lens rig.

A image was taken every second resulting in the following movie:



The concept is similar to the Dizzy Rascal Bonkers video, if we do get round to using the one shot lens we will post up a few sample panoramas and a tutorial...

See Peters VR Weblog for more panoramic imagery - of particular note is his latest 'observation deck' panorama.

IPhone 3D Texture Mapped City: Paris

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In the comments to our recent post on 3D New York on the iPhone Matthieu suggested we ran a search for Paris. The clip is below, all we can say is wow:



Paris 3D is the first full texture mapped 3D city on the iPhone and it is very impressive. With other cities to come take a look at www.mobile3dcity.com for more info.

iTunes link : http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323822225&mt=8

Augmented Reality: Urban Tagging via Messages and 3D Models

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Augmented Reality on mobiles is currently without question one of the hottest research fields. A new application from Metaio is taking the concept a step forward allowing users to leave tweets, messages, web pages and 3D models in a real space for other users to view or pick up when there are in the vicinity.



This opens up a whole number of new development routes from augmented graffiti to leaving a virtual message outside someones apartment if they are out through to tagging locations, restaurants and services with virtual comments for users to view by simply pointing the mobile device at the location.

The application is currently under development for iPhone, Google Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 platforms.

Picked up via VentureBeat.

Population Density: Google Maps Census System Preview

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At the moment here at CASA we are working on a phase one deliverable of a new grant entitled NeISS - National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation. Funded by the JISC as part of its Information Environment Programme it will provide a platform to meet the demand for powerful simulation tools by social scientists, public and private sector policymakers. Social Simulation is an expanding field due to its forecasting applications for scenarios in transport, housing, education, healthcare etc.

Our first of many outputs is to visualize the UK Census data via MapTube and we thought we would share some of our first results as they make for quite intriguing images - such as the screen grab below detailing Population Density of the Isle of Wight:


The work is ongoing with the ability to 'click' on areas and view the underlying data as well as data streaming and varying levels of detail all forthcoming. Countywide, zoomable down to local level Cenus data is hard to come across, for a quick view is provides quite a good way to identify pattens in the urban landscape. Below is Central London:



Our back end system under development means that the output is not limited to the UK Census, it would be interesting to make this a global tool, more on this in future posts...

You can see our sample map of Population Density direct via MapTube.

3D New York City: First 3D City on the iPhone

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UpNext 3D NYC is the first 3D city app we have seen on the iPhone. The application allows the user to explore Manhattan via a 3D map with the normal subway/search functions.

The demo below provides a walkthough:



In days gone by this would of been called 'mobile 3D GIS', nowadays mapping apps are ubiquitous with the inclusion of 3D fast becoming the selling point. Is the 3D map anything more than a gimmick? The same question has been asked for years about 3D GIS in general, for the record we think its great..

iTunes Link: http://www.itunes.com/app/upnextnyc

UpNext 3D NYC: http://www.upnext.com/iphone

New City in Central Africa: La Cité du Fleuve

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Conceived to appear from the marshes at an islet of the Congo River, North of the city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, La Cité du Fleuve is an ambitious new city project:



Its not often you get complete new cities planned in Central Africa and if it brings increased growth and wealth to the area then all well and good, it certainly looks impressive. Then again, it does look slightly like a 'gated' city, we lost track of the number of times 'security' was mentioned in the above clip.

Then again the issues relating to planning in Central Africa differ considerably to Western Europe so perhaps we are being too quick to criticise - its an interesting discussion point though...

Visualisation by http://www.realimage.tv/

Cityfix: MTV and OneDotZero

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Cityfix was commissioned by MTV/OneDotZero as a fictional brand created to campaign for industrial architecture in a post-industrial era:

Cityfix from Studio Cymbol on Vimeo.

Directed by Matthew Bullock, produced by Rebekah Cooper and animated by Neal Coghlan, Cityfix highlights the beauty and heritage represented by industrial structures in comparison to contemporary 'quick-fix' housing solutions that make individual cities seem like clones of each other.

See Studio Cymbal on Vimeo for more clips.

SketchUp to Google Earth Timelapse

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Reader will know that a couple of main themes here on digital urban are timelapse imagery and 3d modelling, as such the movie below appeals as it features both:



Created by db3d2 the movie is actually an interesting insight into the photograph to SketchUp to Google Earth modelling process.

See http://www.db-3d.com/blog.html for more info.

Competition Winners

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We were slightly overwhealmed with entires to the competion to win a copy of Virtual Geographic Environments.

The answer to the question - what plug-in was using to create the book cover - was of course Greeble. For those interested see our Greeble Earth post for the first test render and a link to the tutorial.

So down to the winners, we had so many entries we are sorry only two people will actually be able to get a book - the winners are:

Miguel Martiarena and David Birch, we will be in contact to get your addresses and copy of the book will be put in the post.

Thanks for all those that entered, the good news is that we will have another competition coming along soon :)