3D history visualization - augmented reality with Archeoguide

Acheoguide is one of European Information Society cultural projects.
The idea of the project was to build a system providing new ways of information access at cultural heritage sites in a compelling, user-friendly way through the use of advanced IT including augmented reality, 3D-visualization, mobile computing, and multi-modal interaction as the project website is stating.
Although the paper written to summarize the results of the project seems the project worked out, I've just accidentally found about it and have never heard before what probably tells it wasn't so applicable.

Here's the video how the end product looks like and the impressions of the tourists with small presentation how the mobile device used for visualization works.

ARCHEOGUIDE is based on a  client-server architecture.  It comprises three modules: the  Site Information Server, the Mobile Units,  and the Communication Infrastructure.

The top-of-the-range Mobile Units (the one you see in video), is the laptop-based one, built on a Toshiba Satellite laptop  computer,  A  Differential GPS receiver and a digital compass are hooked on the laptop to provide position and orientation tracking of the touring user. A PC camera with automatic luminance adjustment for capturing live video from the users viewpoint, and a special Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Mounted Display (HMD) in the form of a pair of see-through sunglasses for displaying AR worlds featuring monument reconstructions on top of their natural surroundings are also attached to the laptop. (Vlahakis et al. 2002)

There is much more information available, you can find on Archeoguide publication page.

Hiroshima mapping project on Google Earth

In memorium Hiroshima atomic bomb blast, during the second world war, Google Earth made a project: gathered facts and is showing them spatially in 3D, sharing with everyone.

It is a really sad story, and the visualization of enormous space affected, with loads of photos of famous people, people notes and talks, pictures of before and after, shows the mass of tragedy. Indeed up to 200,000 deaths are counted due to such bombing.. and it wasn't the only one.

Further you can find the video on youtube that explores the features of Google Earth project.



Or you can directly access all this on your browser, having a google earth plug.
"Hiroshima mapping project". You can selectively visualize just videos, photos, testimonies in english or in japan, even tweets that happened within the time. There are old map overlays available and the area where everything was burned down, as well as the are of black rains.. and so on..

heritage mapping: Fiji in 3D model

There was a project held in 2005 in Fiji that tried to support community based biodiversity conservation as the basis for ensuring food security and sustainable
livelihoods.



There were different phases where the GI and GIS was involved. Starting with the beginning phase where the digital elevation map was prepared and later, the 3D completed blank 1:10000 horizontal and 1:6666 vertical scale model was done. On this model locals where asked to mark the heritage objects, to pin them, to color, to label. And later on the model was transferred to a map.

Looks really interesting and great collaborative work.
Have a look at the Report on the Participatory 3D Modelling &
Participatory GIS Exercise held on 4-13 April 2005 on Ovalau Island, Fiji.

visual information cognition: spatial visualization in 3D with GPlates

Obtaining more data and developing methods of analysis, scientists in parallel are working on information visualization as it is the most perceivable and comprehensible way for humans anyone would tell. The visual cognition (visual analysis like perception, acquisition, memorization, of shape properties and spatial relations) is remarkably flexible and efficient (Ullman 1996).

Map creation with Matematica

I believe there is a number of research  in visual spatial cognition done to prove I've just stated above. One research in 3D vs 2D proves that 3D increases the spatial memory, what means one is able to remember at least longer. (Cockburn, 2004), although in general it is very hard to prove something about our brain using the same brain itself.

Indeed, I am not going to argue here if 3D is better then 2D or that visual information is perceived better than textual, as more research on this topic should be done from my side. But all I want to notice, that more and more softwares are developed for spatial information visualization.
If you have a look at the geoweb side, many applications recently launched has a graphical visualization. Statistics are no longer presented as a bunch of numbers, visual interface is developing,as example Gapminder, or new visualization package, google visualization api package in R software.
Map making has reached the peak already - everybody can do it from simply route creation on Google Maps or Google Earth, to table visualization using Google Fusion Tables, or such geoweb applications like GeoCommons, or we can jump to professional map creation and visualization. Already existing desktop applications that help to visualize data are often updated, besides new desktop softwares with an amazing visualization arise.

Let's have a look at such hard subject as plate-tectonics and it's visualization.