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Live Local 3D Maps

Brandon716

Brandon716

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Windows Live Local has central Toronto mapped out pretty well, although they totally lack many GTA centres such as Mississauga, Scarborough, and even lack most of the buildings in North York (although they have the New York towers and a few by the 401).

With that said, for those of you with the ability you should fly over to the 3D maps and take a spin, you can get detailed 3D virtual worlds of central Toronto:

http://local.live.com/

Just switch it to 3D, let it install if it needs, switch to hybrid, and zoom in on your city of choice (Toronto of course!) :)

With that said, here are a few 3D views of Toronto.


Downtown looking southeast from the northwest:
to_model1.jpg


Downtown looking west-southwest from the east:
to_model2.jpg


Looking north-northwest away from downtown toward midtown:
to_model3.jpg


Several kilometers north looking back south toward downtown from Yonge-Eglinton (7km, 4.5 miles):
to_model4.jpg


Way northwest of downtown-midtown-yonge & eglinton looking back southwest (about 13 miles out of the city):
to_model5.jpg


You can also see detailed models of local blocks.

Dundas Square:
to_model6.jpg


Nathan Phillips Square/City Hall:
to_model7.jpg



So load it up, and have some fun! :)

http://local.live.com/
 
Toronto viewed through the best rendering engine 1998 has to offer!

Very neat.
 
looks like you were having lots of fun! my computer almost exploded last time I tried to go 3D on virtual earth... I'll have totry it on somebody elses computer that has more power.
 
to_model5.jpg


Avenue and Glencairn is 13 miles outside of the city? Try 4.5 miles (7 km). Either way, this program is sick!
 
You're right, its actually right at 5 miles when I calculated it out. So that equates to 8km.

So I disgress. 8km it is! :)

Remember, I was estimating greatly after I had taken the screen shots a while before posting. ;)

One thing I like about Windows Live Local is that it appears to use fewer polygons than Google Earth. While technically inferior, they use higher quality textures to compensate, but Google Earth's polygon detail tends to make the flyaround so slow its unusable. And that's with not even half the buildings in the city mapped out...
 
Does anyone know how they've modeled all this? As far as I know there isn't anything out there that can figure out the height and massing of buildings from just satellite images, do they have full time staff actually modeling each building, where do they get the height information from?

Unlike google they are not relying on the users to model buildings, I don’t even think they allow you to import or export the models..
 
I believe the team over at Microsoft invested in a group of modellers and geographers to visit cities individually and just do what they could.

If you notice, Windows Live Local 3D relies considerably more on texture quality and less on polygons and shaping of models. It takes considerably less time to layer a boxier looking 3D shape with some higher quality textures than it does using the Google Earth model, and with a well paid, highly motivated team of experts its easy to see how they've modelled the cities they've modelled.
 
I can not belive these are renderings? like real images!

We do the 3D architectural renderings too, wish to communicate more with you.
 
Those are 3D renderings !!! :O

Google Earth is still more user friendly, but i they could couple this kind of thing with google Earth. Wow.

Thanks for sharing!
 
Live Maps is now allowing users to submit their own buildings to their 3D maps through the Dassault 3D VIA system, in a similar way to Google Earth allowing people to add buildings through Sketchup.

I've already downloaded 3D VIA, and I plan to convert some of my Sketchup buildings to 3D VIA so that they can be viewed on Live Maps.
 
I was thinking of trying out that program. It is free now that Microsoft owns it.
It's apparently pretty easy to use, and is way better than Sketchup.
 
Glad to hear you're using this: I plan to keep it much more aggressively up-to-date than has been the case in the past, but don't hesitate to let me know if you find errors or need clarifications.
 
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