C3 is a company from Norrköping, Sweden, and subsidiary of the aviation and military technology company Saab, with some very impressive demos of photorealistic 3d city models. Like some other companies, they use (oblique) photos as the base technology for the fully automatic production of the city model. Although C3’s technology uses photos only and no LiDAR data, they capture tree canopy as well. According to their website, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo are already realized in 3d.
I have ordered a sample of the data some weeks ago and I have to say that the geometry looks pretty crumpled if you get close to the buildings. However, it is a nice example of what is possible with digital aerial imagery and an fully automated processing chain. Another example I like to use to show people what is possible these days is virtual earth 3D by microsoft. They also apply a fully automated workflow to create 3D representations of cities based on the Vexel Ultracam Xp. For an example have a look at maps.live.com (or http://www.bing.com/maps – stupid url, isn’t it) and fly to Vienna, Austria. Switch to 3D mode and get impressed by the level of details with regards to the geometry.
I can explain the URL – with the launch of its Google competition search engine “Bing”, Microsoft wants to create not just a search engine but a new brand. For that reason, branding, well known services such as Virtual Earth are now renamed as Bing Maps formerly known as Virtual Earth…
A great collection and case study area for opinion trend.