Apr 08 2007
Berkurodam 1.0.1 is on grid
Something to Shout About
Motivated by the need to present something relatively coherent at the California Geographic Information Systems 2007 Conference in Oakland last week, nearly all of the underground construction was completed at the Berkurodam site. The crunch was really clarifying in terms of what level of detail is desirable versus what level was practical for this particular presentation. As it was, my presentation in the late afternoon of 4 April was impacted by some grid downtime that very morning, and I was not able to generate the last-minute machinima that some folks attending my talk were expecting. For those with an interest and willingness to download 18MB of PowerPoint, that talk’s slides are here.
The very last touch that I struggled to include was a set of four soffits that I used to approximate what looks like segments of a dome in the physical Berkeley BART Station, above the mezzanine level and under the cupola. Amusingly, in my hyper-exhausted state I struggled to find the proper proportions for the Second Life tetrahedron prim (a prism that tapers to a point) that would form it into one half of a diagonally split cube. These I fit into four corners that had been formed by the four arches under the cupola. Of course, one must to do this without causing interference for those who ride the escalators. Also of course, all one needs is a lousy triangle to provide the same visual result - perhaps only in the physical station would one really want to fill that space with something that strengthens the ties among the arches. While I’m a bit uncertain about usage here - what I mean to say is that I could have floated a fascia in space and easily produced the same result that I painstakingly formed from a “solid” prism.
The ground surface was a usefully transluscent aerial photo for much of my construction work, but for presentation’s sake, I have temporarily made everything opaque brick. As a practical consideration, I have leveled the site near 25.5 meters, and have not yet paid proper respect to surface topography.
All mapped storm drains and sanitary sewers were included with estimated heights, and several remarkable close fits took shape. Part of my excitement about the value of the SL technique of full 3-d surface presentation is that many complex map layers of underground commodites become very simple, almost intuitive to observe when seen in 3-d. They just make obvious sense in a way that is far easier to read (from a well-chosen perspective) than any superposition of 2-d maps with transparency or symbology.
As of version 1.0.1, Berkurodam is in a draft final state below ground surface. Currently, on the ground surface and above there are only placeholder boxes for about eight structures having photoreal textures—but textures that have not yet been through the rigorous rectification process using ERDAS Imagine, and was applied to several key textures within the BART station. In addition to improvements in texture squareness, I have yet to make proper use of the new 10cm aerial photo, nor yet to build streets, curbs, medians, parking meters, street lights, traffic signals, trees, news racks, and various signs. That surficial detail is targeted for completion prior to the ESRI User Conference in mid-June.
As one of several key learnings I was fortunate to take away from the CalGIS 2007 conference, I now see the importance of cloning the surface building work using Google SketchUp, essentially to re-use the textures and generate far greater visibility for this project than I would otherwise get from SL blogs alone.
There was much more to say about my learnings at the CalGIS conference, but for this evening, it must wait. Here are a couple more shots from Second Life for perspective.
