Digital Urban - The Visual City

Nothing in the city is experienced by itself for a city’s perspicacity is the sum of its surroundings. To paraphrase Lynch (1960), at every instant, there is more than we can see and hear. This is the reality of the physical city, and thus in order to replicate the visual experience of the city within digital space, the space itself must convey to the user a sense of place. This is what we term the “Visual City”, a visually recognisable city built out of the digital equivalent of bricks and mortar, polygons, textures, and most importantly data. Recently there has been a revolution in the production and distribution of digital artefacts which represent the visual city. Digital city software that was once in the domain of high powered personal computers, research labs and professional software are now in the domain of the public-at-large through both the web and low-end home computing. These developments have gone hand in hand with the re-emergence of geography and geographic location as a way of tagging information to non-proprietary web-based software such as Google Maps, Google Earth, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, ESRI’s ArcExplorer, and NASA’s World Wind, amongst others. The move towards ‘digital earths’ for the distribution of geographic information has, without doubt, opened up a widespread demand for the visualization of our environment where the emphasis is now on the third dimension. While the third dimension is central to the development of the digital or visual city, this is not the only way the city can be visualized for a number of emerging tools and ‘mashups’ are enabling visual data to be tagged geographically using a cornucopia of multimedia systems. We explore these social, textual, geographical, and visual technologies throughout this chapter

The Virtual Museums of Caen : a case study on modes of representation of digital historical content

In the early 19th Century much of the Strath of Kildonan was cleared of its people who were replaced by sheep farming. This pattern was repeated across the Scottish Highlands. In 2013 Timespan, Helmsdale Heritage and Arts Centre, hosted a program of activities to mark the 200th anniversary of the Clearances. The centrepiece of these activities was a community excavation of the Caen township in the Strath of Kildonan. Based upon the evidence of that excavation a digital model of the township was created using the Virtual Time Travel Platform. The Virtual World of Caen can be explored as part of an installation in Timespans storytelling room. Visitors can experience what life would have been like in the Strath of Kildonan in 1813. This paper reports how the model has been deployed in different settings and on various digital platforms. These include showcasing the model at the Helmsdale Highland Games where visitors could explore the township of the past on stereo head mounted displays, or a Virtual Museum website that welcomes visitors from around the globe, as well as using Google Cardboard to allow visitors to explore Caen today, the virtual reconstruction of Caen simultaneously whilst on the site.Postprin

Valoración de la calidad de imágenes panorámicas esféricas

[EN] In recent years, the production of panoramic images has been boosted by the increasing use of digital photographiccameras and mobile phones. However, for highly demanding applications such as long-range deformation monitoring, theaccuracy and quality control of panoramic images and processes used to obtain accurate 3D models should be properlyassessed. Therefore, prior to being applied in real projects, the quality of the spherical panoramic images generated bythree widely used computer programs (Agisoft Metashape, GigaPan Stitch and PTGui) is evaluated using the same imagesof a photogrammetric laboratory full of control points and an outdoor environment by shooting from several stations. Inaddition to the assessment of the geometrical accuracy, the study also includes important aspects for practical efficiencysuch as workflow, speed of processing, user-friendliness, or exporting products and formats available. The results of thecomparisons show that Agisoft Metashape meets the required geometric specifications with higher quality and has clearadvantages in performance if compared to the other two tested programs.[ES] En los últimos años, la producción de imágenes panorámicas se ha visto impulsada por el uso cada vez mayor de cámaras fotográficas digitales y teléfonos móviles. Sin embargo, deben evaluarse adecuadamente en aplicaciones altamente exigentes como la monitorización de deformaciones a grandes distancias, la precisión y el control de calidad de las imágenes panorámicas y los procesos utilizados para obtener modelos 3D precisos. Por consiguiente, antes de ser aplicadas en proyectos reales, se evalúa la calidad de las imágenes panorámicas esféricas generadas por tres programas informáticos ampliamente utilizados (Agisoft Metashape, GigaPan Stitch y PTGui) utilizando las mismas imágenes de un laboratorio fotogramétrico lleno de puntos de apoyo y del exterior desde varias estaciones. Además de la evaluación de la precisión geométrica, el estudio también incluye aspectos importantes para la eficiencia práctica como es el flujo de trabajo, la velocidad de procesamiento, la facilidad de uso o la exportación de productos y los formatos disponibles. Los resultados de las comparaciones muestran que Agisoft Metashape cumple con las especificaciones geométricas requeridas con mayor calidad y tiene claras ventajas de rendimiento si se compara con los otros dos programas testeados.Javadi, P.; Lerma, J.; García-Asenjo, L.; Garrigues, P. (2021). Quality assessment of spherical panoramic images. En Proceedings 3rd Congress in Geomatics Engineering. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 7-14. https://doi.org/10.4995/CiGeo2021.2021.12728OCS71

'The Coolest Way to Watch Movie Trailers in the World': Trailers in the Digital Age

At a time of uncertainty over film and television texts being transferred online and on to portable media players, this article examines one of the few visual texts that exist comfortably on multiple screen technologies: the trailer. Adopted as an early cross-media text, the trailer now sits across cinema, television, home video, the internet, games consoles, mobile phones and iPods. Exploring the aesthetic and structural changes the trailer has undergone in its journey from the cinema to the iPod screen, the article focuses on the new mobility of these trailers, the shrinking screen size, and how audience participation with these texts has influenced both trailer production and distribution techniques. Exploring these texts, and their technological display, reveals how modern distribution techniques have created a shifting and interactive relationship between film studio and audience