Urban Spaces is a beta service from Holistic City Software that allows urban designers, architects, developers and planners to search for examples of public spaces of a specific size or shape.
This is our first look at Unity - an integrated authoring tool for creating 3D video games or other interactive content such as architectural visualizations or real-time 3D animations. The editor runs on Windows and Mac OS X and can produce games for Windows, Mac, Wii, or iPhone platforms. It can also produce browser games that use the Unity web player plugin, supported on Mac and Windows.
Prof Mike Batty of CASA - home of digital urban - has made his book "Urban Modelling: Algorithms, Calibrations, Predictions" which was published in 1976 freely available online.
Our latest paper written with Andrew Crooks, Michael Batty, and Richard Milton from CASA entitled "Mapping for the Masses Accessing Web 2.0 Through Crowdsourcing" is now available online via Social Science Computer Review. The print version comes out later in the year.
On Monday 27th April the Building Centre in London is hosting a half day seminar on Digital Cities.
Features:
Wikipedia describes Unity as an integrated authoring tool for creating 3D video games or other interactive content such as architectural visualizations or real-time 3D animations. Unity is similar to Director, Blender game engine, Virtools or Torque Game Builder in the sense that an integrated graphical environment is the primary way of authoring the game.The Department of Communities and Local Government in the United Kingdom are carrying out a review of data visualisation - how data is presented and brought to life using charts, graphs, maps, timelines, animations etc - for public sector decision-makers and researchers - and need your help.
The work will identify good practice in visualising data, particularly for:
They are looking for good examples of visualisation (we presume world wide) that have:
The project/website will be an excellent opportunity to show case your own examples of good visualisation, and help contribute to common standards of good practice in the research community. If you have any examples, email them on visualisation@ocsi.co.uk, or call on 01273 201 345.
The project has been commissioned by the Department of Communities and Local Government, who are looking to understand the potential for visualisations to analyse and communicate data, and provide guidance for national and local analysts on making best use of visualisation.
Work on the project will explore questions including:
The primary output from the project will be a web application, to help users identify strengths and weaknesses of visualisations for particular purposes, also linking to examples and supporting material.
For further information contact James Geehan, (Project manager), Communities and Local Government, tel: 0207 944 4857, James.Geehan@communities.gsi.gov.uk or Tom Smith, (Project lead), OCSI, tel: 01273 201345, tom.smith@ocsi.co.ukThe briefing note is also available for download in PDF format and as a Word document.
Rendering can to be honest be a bit of a pain, there are often so many options to tweak and settings to be aware of that getting the correct lighting or look to a model can be enormously frustrating.
Its a similar story with the image above, rendered within a HDR environment in a couple of minutes. This allows us to get on with the work flow rather than worrying about 'photons, final gathers' etc etc that are far too common in 3D packages.
The only option we would like to see is the ability to render out animations and fly throughs of the models, that would make hyperShot a must buy.
In recent weeks the level of expenses claimed by Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom has been hitting the headlines. Thanks to MapTube here at CASA it is now possible to view a map of the UK detailing MPs' expenditure from 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008, the map is coloured to show the total amounts being claimed by MPs in each constituency.
The total expenditure for all 646 MPs is £86,781,20;
The mean is £134,544.5;
The maximum claim was for £167,306 by Ann Keen of Brentford and Islewort;
The minimum claim was for £40,433 by Philip Hollobone of Ketterin;
The data for the Crewe and Nantwich constituency (Edward Timpson) and the Glenrothes constituency (Lindsay Roy) are missing from the original dataset.
Note the information does not show members' travel expenses, which are in a separate table to the allowance expenditure.
You can view the map direct via MapTube.
We have updated our live weather feed from the roof of CASA in Central London. The data now includes UV and Solar levels alongside Wind Chill, Heat Index, Temperature, Wind Gust etc.'Segments of the video may show potential designs of developments that have been revised, put on hold or terminated. Massing location and heights of potential developments may not reflect future zoning revisions by City Planning. Refinement of our 3D San Francisco and future developments are in progress and we look forward to releasing future media. In the meantime specifics about individual project should be located on their respected official websites.'That said, it is one of those movies to sit back and watch, it is really well done.
