Leadwerks Engine for Architectural Visualisation

Its always good to see innovation in the field of real-time visualisation in relation to architectural projects. Our argument is usually not to go for the known route, the high priced software engines, but to explore other solutions for clients. As such it is really nice to see visualisation companyPure3d using the Leadwerks Editor.

Pure3d’s remit was to deliver a rendered movie template which could be used for further editing and audio overlay. The visualisation was based upon CAD floor plans which they used as a base for modeling and layout.

In terms of Interactivity, the project can be presented in a game like setting with realtime interactivity, this allows prospective purchasers to take a free look around the site and properties.

Rendering is quick with the source material movie output to 4000x3000px per frame in less than 30 minutes on a single workstation, this in turn means notable savings in production costs.

Head over to the Pure3d Leadwerks Meets Architecture blog for more info and screenshots.

Bing engages open maps community

Continuously innovating and improving our map data is a top priority and a massive undertaking at Bing. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new initiative to work with the OpenStreetMap project, a community of more than 320,000 people who have built high quality maps for every country on earth. Microsoft is providing access to our Bing Aerial Imagery for use in the OpenStreetMap project, and we have hired industry veteran Steve Coast to lead this effort.

As a Principal Architect for Bing Mobile, Steve will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to engage with OpenStreetMap and other open source and open data projects. As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing’s global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM.

Current OSM editing tools use imagery that is limited in the amount of resolution about the underlying geography (left, center). Bing’s global aerial imagery (right) will enable the OSM community to have access to an unprecedented set of high-quality data, which will enable them to engage in better mapping tasks.

Steve Coast is no stranger to the open community.  He founded OpenStreetMap, a wiki map of the world which anyone can help improve, similar to Wikipedia. Steve also co-founded CloudMade, a company that has supported OpenStreetMap from the early days and which provides an innovative mapping platform and tools which utilize OpenStreetMap. CloudMade is a good example of how the market can benefit from the work of the OpenStreetMap project, and Bing Maps is pleased to join them in the community effort to build better maps.

“We’re pleased to see Microsoft investing in the open map community, and we wish Steve all the best in his new role with Bing,” said Christian Petersen, VP Community, CloudMade.

We are looking forward to working with the OpenStreetMaps community to help deliver even better maps for people around the world.