Creative uses of new technology can't get much better than this - a bunch of guys have recreated the entire planet in three dimensions in their spare time. If I hadn't sampled it I wouldn't have believed it. Led by MichaelFotoohi ,mfotoohi@micazook.com a software contractor who lives near Heathrow, London, they have used freely available US army aerial photography (which they claim gives better definition that Google's own photography) and superimposed on it another freely available global grid of roads, as can be seen in the white grid lines in these photos (below - after clicking “more”). They have used their own - secret - 3D software engine to merge all this with the outlines of what the buildings look like in real life. Hey presto we have the equivalent of Google Earth and Google street view combined with this vital addition. You can actually walk down the roads with your avatar and go into buildings as I am doing in the You Tube video - anywhere on the planet. They did a mock up of me as an avatar (smart move that guys . .) and I was able to walk around the Times Square area of New York which they have rendered (ie filled in the details of the buildings).
They can't do that by themselves for the whole world - but all the building blocks are there - so they are throwing it open to all of us to buy or rent houses shops or whatever and construct them ourselves in a fairly simply way. It's a kind of Wikipedia for virtual worlds. They have a commercial model for it since residents will be able to buy or rent houses or shops or buy and sell clothes etc or pay for advertising space. This could be big business as Second Life has shown this year with $500 million worth of trade in "Virtual" goods. The creative opportunities in terms of doing anything from putting paintings on the wall to films or public sculpture are endless.
I don't know whether this will be a roaring success as they don't yet know what will happen if ever they had to scale up to meet exploding demand but it certainly deserves to succeed and there is a good chance it will. I think it is quite awesome that they have got even this far after spending barely £50,000 on something that could challenge the virtual earths of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft with a world that has an easier and more flexible feel other ones such as Second Life orTwinity .com. They hope to go into limited public testing within the next couple of months. But things have been so hectic for them they haven't even settled on a name yet. Any ideas? - put them in the comment slot below.
