Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Model Your Town Competition

Sorry folks I know it has been a couple of weeks since the last update.  I have been switching my PC from Windows Vista to Windows 7 and performing a few other hardware upgrades as well.  But the project is still full steam ahead.  I am pleased to announce that the project is now entered into Google Earth's Model Your Town Competition 2012.  I will know by march if the project makes it into the final 12.  More details on the competition can be found here http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2011/11/announcing-2012-google-model-your-town.html

At the weekend I spent an hour going around Coleraine town centre to take a few images around the pedestrian areas that have not been covered by Street View.  Am currently working mainly on Church Street and Society Street. I took an image of the store front of Peacocks fashion store on Church Street.  Since doing this, modelling the building and uploading to the 3D Warehouse an announcement has been made that Peacocks retail has gone into administration threatening store closures throughout Northern Ireland.  If this is the case my model maybe out of date exceptionally quickly.  Just proving how fluid the real world is compared to taking a 3D snapshot of how a building, town or city looks at a single point in time.

As an update here is an Image of Moores department store which is currently available in the 3D Warehouse awaiting approval to be uploaded to Google Earth.




Thanks again.

AJ


Thursday, 5 January 2012

Happy new year


I realise that there has not been an update on this since July 2011 and I apologise to any who has tried keeping up to date with it.  The number of models live on Google Earth/Maps has exceeded my expectations towards the end of last summer by going beyond my targets.  The number of models sits now at 171.  So what have I been doing since then?  Well my university course has demanded much of my time over the last few months and I have been only able to create a few models between assignments.  

The Railway road area has been completed with a few model updates along the way.  Also now complete is Brook Street.  I have begun work on the Lodge Road, Hanover Place, Park Street and Milburn Road.  Circular Road, Long Commons and Ballycastle Road have yet to be completed but much of the initial work has been carried out.  

I have a few weeks off now and hope to get about another 20 live on Google Earth by February.  When the days get a little longer and the temperatures warm up I am going to go out into Coleraine town centre and get some images as these important streets within the town are not covered by Google’s Streetview and are difficult to model without some primary collected images.  

Some models to look out for in the next few weeks are Coleraine Showgrounds,  Coleraine Tescos and more housing along the Circular Road.  Until then keep an eye on Belfast in Google Earth for the work being carried out by the Belfast 3D Project.


I promise to post more regular updates...bit of a new year’s resolution. 

AJ