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How to build a Minecraft town in 30 minutes

By community planning, data gaming, gaming, GIS, mincraft town, minecraft No Comments

Minecraft is a sandbox construction game involving players creating and destroying various types of blocks in a three dimensional environment. The player takes an avatar that can destroy or create blocks, forming fantastic structures, creations and artwork across the various multiplayer servers in multiple game modes.
As such it is a hotbed of virtual cities and towns which when stepped back from has notable potential for data visualisation, community planning and even public GIS. The movie below is a neat time-lapse detailing how to build a town in 30 minutes:

We will have more on Minecraft in future posts…

3D GIS IPad App: 3D-GIS in the Cloud

By Posts No Comments

The 3D-GIS in the Cloud App for iPad and Smartphones allows city data to be navigated in 3D. Mixing augmented reality and 3D visualisations the App extends the reach of GIS beyond the office and allows organisations to make collaborative and accurate business decisions in both field and office environments.



The system supports existing GIS spatial data from various files (e.g. Shapefile, GDB, Multipatch, GeoTiff, ECW, GML, SDF, WMF, WFS) and database sources (e.g. ArcSDE, SQL Server, Oracle). Each data source is rendered and handled as an independent layer within the 3D model. The movie below provides a look at the app in action:


In addition to the normal GIS information the app allows 3D SketchUp models of structures or features, either existing or planned to be visualised.

We are normally sceptical about such ‘onsite GIS’ software as the reality compared to the marketing is often a long way apart, in this case we have to say the system looks impressive, for more information, visit http://www.sivandesign.com/3d-gis

CryEngine 3 The Possibilities

By Game Engines One Comment

On our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation we are currently focused on Lumion and Unity for rapid urban or data visualisation. Yet our eyes are turning towards the possibilities offered by the CryEngine 3. With a 2013 release it is looking well timed for next years options.

The CryEngine with its Sandbox mode has always been streets ahead of other game engines. CryEngine 3 with its DX11 integration, dynamic A1 for agent based models and adaptive tessellation  looks like opening up new possibilities for urban visualisation, data integration and crowd based simulation. The movie below looks at these possibilities:

Take a look at http://www.crytek.com/cryengine for more details.

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