Earthware Blog

The great thing about maps and I expect a reason why they are fast becoming the ‘must have’ thing in a website, is that they present information in a visually stimulating format and allow the user to interact with that information. Take Street Level View’s for an example whether you love it or loathe it, it allows you to interact with a location – you choose where to go and what to look at.

Over the next few days I will be introducing you to some other multimedia concepts that we have been working on, that can be used independently or with mapping, to give another way to display information in a visual and interactive format.

We kick off today with…

3d Virtual Tour Videos

Virtual tours are a great way to communicate a route, whether that’s a bike race, a 10km run or a travel itinerary. Using Google Earth imagery we display locations in three dimensional visual representations, giving an indication of inclines and distances, as well as picturesque views. Add information such as existing photos, videos and locality information to this by embedding it into the imagery and the user is able to really understand a location either as they navigate around on their own, or watching the animations as a video.

There are a number of ways you can use the finished product. For example:

· Embed it into a webpage as a live Google Earth animation. The user can now browse the route without needing to have Google Earth installed and open.

· Send it to customers/contacts in an email

· Add it to DVD marketing materials

· Display it on a screen such as in TV advertising or a one off broadcast or at a trade show or exhibition

For more information about 3d virtual tours, please contact Earthware

Tomorrow… Advanced interactive mapping.

This new release of virtual earth has some major updates to the 3d plugin. The two biggest changes being real time clouds and ’street view’ imagery for 3d models.

The first time I saw the real time clouds demo’d last week my first thought was “this looks just like the opening titles to Quantum Leap!”. Zooming through the clouds at as if in a plane is really cool even if it is a bit of a gimmick.

To give you an idea of what it looks like take a look at the video below of Mount Snowdon in Wales. Unfortunately I couldn’t get our normal capture program (fraps) working with the latest 3d plugin so it’s not very smooth, and certainly not ‘zooming’ but it still adds a lot of atmosphere to the landscape.

Go and give it a try for yourself here are a few mountains to try:

• Snowdon, Wales, UK
• Mont Blanc, French Alps
• Everest – looks especially cool looking down on all the clouds

Now if only we could commercially sell these 3d videos flyovers, like we currently do with Google Earth video tours, it would be brilliant, but Microsoft’s 3rd party licensing deals are always the issue.

That’s all for now next time we will look at the new 3d street view imagery that’s been added to some of the modeled cities.

Here at Earthware we are always keen to drive more value from the VScapes 3d property modelling presentations, completed for our property development clients. So when we heard about the new web page exporter for Google’s 3d modelling application Sketchup, we immediately saw its application to building projects.

The exporter is much more basic than the 3d model viewer from 3dVia we have previously shown on the blog but it has one advantage, you don’t need to install anything extra to see the model its works in any normal web browser!

Its really easily to use and as you can see for yourself below its pretty effective.

To read more about using the Sketchup web exporter plugin see this video tutorial. The exporter is a beta release and we would love to see more functionality in future including 360 rotation and basic zooming, hopefully the best is yet to come!

This is just another way for our clients to present their building projects adding to the established Vscapes products including videos, Google Earth models and 3d PDFs.

With government claims that most people back today’s wind farm announcements, and the Guardian citing a new NOP poll showing 80% favour their use and 64% are happy to live within 5km of a development,

Why does it still take so long to push through planning?

Residents seem to be unable to visualise new developments and feel pushed out of the planning process.  In the recent example of a proposed farm in Stonish Hill, a ‘Vscapes’ presentation (virtual landscape) for us non techies, was used to clearly engage local residents and offer an accurate depiction of the proposed development, for more info click here. Earthware, the company commissioned to prepare the presentation, created scale 3D models and then embed these with Google Earth, allowing navigation around the proposed development, and demonstrating accurate views from any location.

If the government are going to reach their stated targets, further support and more efficient processes like that used in the Stonish Hill wind farm will come to the forefront in the mind set of both local planning authorities, but perhaps more pertinently with developers, as long drawn out applications result in lower ROI, but with no major increase in government funding these additional costs would have to be raised by customers through higher bills.

A recent Sustainable Development commission report cited community engagement and environmental impacts as two key factors in the future success of wind power development in the UK, and with many applications being rejected much like the proposal for the Drummuir Estate wind farm, declined as Lord Gill said there was "no substance" to the council’s submission on the cumulative impact of the proposal, and with the 2020 deadline outlined by the government it is pertinent for developers to take notice of the added value a Vscapes presentation offers.

Using details from a local planning application for a proposed wind farm, Earthware provided a Vscapes presentation to aid in the application showing a 3d scale virtual representation of the completed site in Google Earth including support structures and access roads.

To download the Google Earth file containing this project and experience the development yourself please click here, you will need to install Google Earth before viewing this file by clicking here.

We are pleased to say that the outcome of the application was successful, and the Vscapes presentation was praised as an effective tool to present and understand the proposed development.

As part of this video, 3D models of wind turbines and a local structure were built to scale to give a real world comparison between the sizes of each.

We at Earthware believe that this style of presentation can be highly effective for a range of environmental planning or pre-visualisation, as it accurately shows how a future structure will appear in the environment and the visual effect it will have on the landscape.  This has been previously demonstrated with our background in visualisations for off-plan property developments.

For more information about how Vscapes can help your planning process visit www.earthware.co.uk/vscapes or call us on +44 (0)845 642 9880.

Yes you heard it folks the sun actually rises!  The Guys at Google have added a sun button and when activated you can see a sun in the sky that cast light on the land and even 3D models. A slider appears at the top of the screen that can be positioned anywhere along its 24hour timeline moving the sun to the appropriate position in the sky.

To the right of the slider is a play button which will play through a day at a default or user designated speed. the night sky even plays with stars once the sun has retreated round the other side of the globe.

I have to say it look great and is a very cool new feature although it does unfortunately not create shadows around 3D structures or between mountains. Even Having said this the overall effect is still very good and adds a lot of depth and realism to the environment.

Clouds and Weather

Other notable features are clouds and up to date weather information which not only beautify the globe but also give relevant and highly useful information to the user about what the weather is like, not only where they are but where they want to go as well. I can see this being very handy for the next ski seasons snow report!

 

Wow isn’t that pretty!

Here the weather report and forecast over our offices for the next few day. doesn’t look nice at all :@(

This project involved the creation of a proposed building the Eos Generali in the heart of the Paris business district for a Microsoft presentation also in Paris.

The video that appears above was created by the lads at 3DVia to show off the tools at their disposal and also the look of the environment in and around this new business development. Earthware worked on 9 models in total each of which can be seen in this video.

Each model was created in Shape and then imported to a collection in Virtual Earth. If you would like to see the results and browse around the 3D models for yourself then please click here.

This was a real coupe for Earthware and it was also a pleasure working with Marc at 3DVia over in the states. We predict big things for the 3DVia-Virtual Earth partnership and are eagerly awaiting the next release of their Shape modelling tool.

If you have any comments then please let us know.

Cheers

Chris

Multi Media Developer

Here at Earthware we have been using Shape for a while now in our interactive mapping and V-scapes products but we have yet to see any updates in the software until now. There have been several new features and a new tool added to shape of which I  will give brief overview of below

Texturing was one area that I felt needed improvement in the original version and I had the opportunity to voice my concerns to the team at 3Dvia when I was collaborating with them on the Virtual Earth Eos Generali project.

The principal improvement that has been added is a non uniform scale tool similar in function to the toolset in Google Sketchup. The texture manipulation tool now allows the user to stretch a texture vertically and horizontally in addition to original uniform scale There is also a new tool for texture manipulation which brings up 4 pins positioned on the texture and a central button which has the unique function of filling your polygon with what is contained within the 4 surrounding pins. The process is demonstrated in the images below.

 

The pins can also be moved manually in an advanced mode that will allow the texture to be stretched in a non uniform manner. It works in a similar way to the push pins in Google Sketchup but is set up in a different way and personally I find it much easier to use and understand.

Manipulate has also changed slightly. Previously it produced a set of slightly confusing directional indicators when the user clicked on the element that was to be moved. Now you receive a helpful marker to shows where you have selected which has a number of arrows attached to it clearly indicating the directions or movement available.

 

With the existing simple but strong tool set I think that these additions further strengthen the unique offering from 3Dvia.

If you have read the previous post you will also be aware of the 3D cities that Microsoft is pioneering in Virtual Earth. They look really good and also allow for embedding of new models within the existing cities. Once they are uploaded it also provides for manipulation, allowing you to ensure it is exactly where you want it :@)

Today sees the launch of version 6.1 of the Microsoft Virtual Earth map control. There are some great new features especially considering its not a major release. Here is a quick summary of the highlights:

High Detailed 3d Cities

Microsoft have updated 4 US cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix and Dallas) to include every building and even trees! These “densified” cities look amazing as you can see from the screen shot below from Las Vegas.

These models and even the matching of trees are apparently all done automatically using the technology Microsoft acquired when buying Vexcel.

We can’t wait to start adding our Vscapes high quality photo realistic models to these existing cities like we have already done in Google Earth to give the ultimate tool for property developments.

Birds Eye views with road map overlays (Hybrid Birds Eye)

Microsoft have done an amazing job at adding road maps and labels to their existing birdseye imagery. We were concerned how this might work when we first heard about it but now we have seen the results we are really impressed.

One thing we noticed of interest is that the roads and labels are being overlayed transparently on top of the existing birdseye imagery, rather than creating a whole new set of birdseye tiles. We are hoping this will be done in future for the aerial hybrid views so that road maps could be overlayed on top of our own custom tile layers.

We have already started integrating hybrid birdseye into our EarthwareProperty estate agency mapping as you can see below, this and our new local area information will be available in the next release this month.

Improved Localisation Support

The new Virtual Earth control now supports localisations of the map “dashboard” user controls. There is now support for English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and French.

There are also now improved localised directions for 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian.

Improved directions and new routing features

There are now directions for walking, this uses different rules about what roads you can use in routing. Traffic based routing is now also available but again only in the US and only where traffic information is currently available.

Other minor features

There are a few more changes that are welcomed but might go unnoticed by some.

• Reverse geocoding, allowing you to get the address for a given latitude and longitude, only is the US currently
• Improved support for Safari 2 and 3
• Improved printing support, especially for Firefox and Safari
• New 3d tour videos features on Live.com (we will blog more about this later today)

One major hitch for UK and Maybe Europe

All these new features are amazing and we spent a long time this morning on local.live.com trying them all out. However we did come across one major problem. It appears that Microsoft have decided to redirect all users from the UK (and maybe Europe - please let us know) to Multimap maps (multimap was recently aquired by Microsoft).

While we can maybe see why UK visitors may get better data and features from using Multimap we would like to be able to choose ourselves not have it forced upon us. The biggest issue is we cannot now access our collections and 3d models on local.live.com which is a big issue for us and I’m sure others.

We have however found a work around in that you can use the url below to set your region to the US, therefore not getting redirected:

http://maps.live.com/?q=&mkt=en-us&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP

In Summary

We have been really impressed by what has been released today and can’t wait to start integrating them into our interactive mapping products. Once again Microsoft have shown their commitment to driving Virtual Earth forward. Thanks to all the dev team involved its a brilliant release!

Vscapes, the interactive modelling division of Earthware is looking for a  3D modeller

Due to the success of the Vscapes offering, it’s time to expand the team! Reporting to the Sales and Marketing Manager, the successful candidate will undertake projects and activities to help drive interactive 3D design.

Accountabilities

• Bespoke 3D Modelling
• Client and project management
• Creating innovative new products and solutions using 3D modelling and API’s
• Constantly developing knowledge in order to increase standards of our 3D models

Person Specification

The successful applicant should satisfy the following requirements:

Required:

· 3d / cad experience e.g. 3dStudio, Sketchup, Autocad

· Photoshop

· Video editing experience e.g. adobe premier, avid, adobe after effects

· General multi-media experience

Desirable:

· Google Earth KML

· Basic HTML

· XML

· Experience creating textures

· Experienced digital photographer

Attitude:

In addition to the above, enthusiasm and self-discipline are valuable traits for this role. Earthware is a small, but fast growing, entrepreneurial organisation with a unique culture built around integrity, enthusiasm, initiative, playing as a team and having fun. Earthware encourages personal and skills development so an eagerness to learn is essential.

Personal Specification:

It almost goes without saying that successful applicants will have good inter-personal skills, as a good working relationship with the team is essential. The ability to work calmly under pressure of deadlines is essential, as is the ability to prioritise and manage parallel tasks. Also essential are good telephone, writing and communication skills.

Location

Earthware is based, in Letchworth, Herts (about 35 minutes by train from London Kings Cross) and the role would be predominantly office based. However, Earthware is a flexible organisation and encourages flexible working arrangements wherever practical.

How to Apply

Please send an up to date C.V. to recruitment@earthware.co.uk stating job reference 3D101 and a selection of your work

C.V. applications without accompanying examples will not be considered.

All applicants must be registered to work in the UK.

For further information or an informal discussion about this position please contact Dan Roberts on 0845 642 9880.

No contact from agencies please.