Skape - 3D City Viewer and Download Tool: New Movie and Demo Online

Earlier this week we had the pleasure of meeting the people from Infoterra for a demo of their recently released 3D city viewer. Known as 'Skape' it enables you to view and perhaps more importantly upload and download highly realistic 3D environments, for visual concepts and interaction with building information. With 12 cities in the UK now available the level of detail and fidelity in the textures is notable. We tend to get quite a few companies through the doors of CASA with 3D models and we can honestly say Skape is the best we have seen so far. The movie below provides an overview, its interesting to see how far the industry has come in just a few short years:


Skape is designed as a professional tool, moving it away from the current models and level of functionality found in Google Earth or Bing. It is aimed at a range of industries, including architecture, planning, building development and environmental consultation. However, it is free to view the cities and at the moment free to create movies as well, as such it makes for an interesting spatial analysis and visualization tool.

Take a look at http://www.skapeworld.com/index.htm for more info and to try it out.

3D Mash-Up Maps let you 'Edit' the World

This weeks NewScientist has a good article entilted '3D mash-up maps let you 'edit' the world. Written by Colin Barras it notes that armchair explorers who soar over 3D cityscapes on their computer may be used to the idea of maps with an extra dimension. But they are now getting accurate enough to offer much more than a preview of your next holiday destination. Accurate, large-scale 3D maps could soon change the way we design, manage and relate to our urban environments.'

Colin dropped us a email here at digital urban, our thoughts are included in the article - you can read the online version via the NewScientist website.

Infoterra prepares launch of cutting edge 3D city mapping tool – Skape

Infoterra Ltd, is a UK based provider of geographic information products and services. We have worked with them quite a lot over the years and they are one of the leading innovators in the field of commercial photogrammerty. It is therefore of note when they send a press release round regarding a brand new 3D city mapping service launching later this year which it says “will have to be seen to be believed”.

Named Skape, it aims to provide B2B professionals with presentational 3D city and mapping data as well as high accuracy building information of the UK’s major cities, all captured by the company’s own dedicated fleet of aircrafts and sensors.

The movie below provides a first look at Skapes output:



The days of grey scale buildings seem to of gone, with Google launching its automated photorealistic cities - see out post on 3D Birmingham - and Infoterra rolling out a similar commercial service it looks like we are entering a new phase of digital cities.

Skape will be launched to the market later this year. To register interest and to receive updates prior to launch, please visit www.skapeworld.com.

See also the Skape Blog for the latest news on the software, views and development.