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Pigeon Sim: Fly Round London as a Pigeon

By Featured, Slider

Researchers here in CASA, University College London,  from the TALISMAN node of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) are working on urban simulations and procedural modelling. As part of the public outreach side of the work, they have created a Pigeon Simulator where you can fly like a pigeon exploring different parts of London.

The simulator uses Microsoft Kinect sensor which tracks body movement and gestures and converts them into movements through Google Earth 3D web plugin – see the movie below for how to fly the PigeonSim:

 
The aim of the work is to use innovative new methods to communicate the city as a data feed, with live feeds powered by CASA’s CityDashboard visualised in Google Earth.
A nod and a flap goes to http://mackerron.com/home/ who is an honorary RA in CASA…

CityEngine 2012 – New Features and ‘Sketch Tool’

By CityEngine, ESRI, Front Page

CityEngine 2012 now supports easy-to-use editing tools for the quick sketching and texturing of 3D building models (read SketchUp):


Its only towards the end of the clip that you realise that the resulting 3D geometries can be saved back to the file geodatabase, allowing proceduaural modelling of your SketchUp style models….
CityEngine 2012 has a number of notable new features, head over to http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2012/10/03/cityengine-2012-1-released/ for full details.
Thanks to Flora of http://en-topia.blogspot.co.uk/ for sending this in.

Geo-located Augmented Reality

By ar media, Augmented Reality, Front Page

With the latest version of Augmented Reality Player for iOS v1.2.0 users can now choose geo-location as a visualization option for their projects. The Geo-location feature allows to use GPS coordinates to locate a 3D model/animation on the earth’s surface. The software then tracks the 3D model coordinates in the real space using a suitable sensor fusion technique. This makes it possible to display virtual models in the real world without any marker:

 
Besides support for geolocated 3D models and animations, now the Player also supports skinning and morphing animations. In addition, users can freely move virtual models in the real environment using an intuitive interface.
The Geo-localization feature extends the spectrum of visualization possibilities of the ARplugin in many application domains, including architecture, engineering and cultural heritage.
Its an interesting development and we would be keen to know the level of accuracy achieved, for rural sites and to determine a rough idea of a developments impact on a view it seems to be useful.
The iOS ARplayer v1.2.0 is available for iPad and iPhone. It can be freely downloaded from Apple’s App Store and it works in association with the latest update of ARmedia Plugin Professional v2.2. Supported products include Trimble SketchUp, Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, Maxon Cinema4D and Nemetschek Vectorworks.
You can download the iOS ARplayer now directly from Apple’s App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/armedia-player/id502524441
For more information see: http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/iosplayer

An American Junction: A Tiltshift Timelapse

By Front Page, Tilt-shift Miniature, timelapse cities, Ubicomp2012

Below is a tiltshift timelapse of a junction in Pittsburgh, running at over 9 minutes at 30 frames per second with one photograph captured every second it was produced using the IPad 3 and Miniatures:

 
Miniatures adds a tiltshift effect to each frame, making creating HD timelapses amazingly easy to capture, we simply set the iPad up against a window and left it running while we went back to our conference here at Ubicomp2012.
Minatures Pro is 4.99 via the Apple Store, with a variety of options, including a neat blur feature between frames, its well worth a look.

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