Imagine a 3D Google Earth World

1 minute read

April 27, 2006, 1:22 PM PDT

Chris' last posting is big news!

Imagine a google earth world where millions of enthusiastic users build replicas of their homes and the stores/ buildings in their neighborhood and then they become veiwable by anybody else. Wiki style, people can work collaboratively to improve and constantly update buildings. What would normally cost billions of dollars for 3D design company to make available then become part of a 3D vitual town/yellow pages. And it would be built for free and rapidly.

Like Second Life, folks could create futuristic worlds â€" alternative URL's to the standard Google Earth. But unlike SL, they would use today's cities and towns as a starting place and create scenarios of the future.

Town planners would then be able to use these models as a starting point for thinking about scenarios (GIS tools like CommunityViz or INDEX could be used to do the impact analysis) and those scenarios which more closely matched the expressed desired future of the citizens would be used to help create implementation strategies.

Here is another article on the subject sent to me by my colleague Chris Haller.

Ken Snyder

Ken Snyder is Executive Director of PlaceMatters

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