
NYU releases the largest LiDAR dataset ever to help urban development - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/12/nyu-releases-the-largest-lidar-dataset-ever-to-help-urban-development
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ant6n
I wonder whether there will be a sort of 3d model version of openstreetmap one
day. Especially with drones, it would be relatively easy for individuals to
start recording the world in 3d.

There are all sorts of cool parishes one could do with that (too bad Google
didn't seem to have an API for their 3d map anymore).

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gottlos
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/F4_Map](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/F4_Map)

take a look at the city of geelong, victoria, Australia - they collected lidar
data and opened it up, so got imported.

Many users are doing the same. We are a long way from Google maps 3D coverage;
but is all open data.

In Australia also have addresses datasets as open ("GNAF"), and many
industries tie back to that to do variius levels of building information
modeling (BIM).

Feels like in 10-20 years those movies where they pull up the blueprints to
plan a heist will be a reality.

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valuearb
What applications? Like most Techcrunch articles seems incomplete, more like a
press release summary.

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anigbrowl
I wonder how many games and movies we'll see set there?

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TeMPOraL
None? At least for video games, for some reason producers don't seem to like
to include real cities. They recreate architectural styles, put a lot of work
into making the place _feel_ like the real city, but if you pull out an actual
map, it turns out the virtual buildings and streets don't exist.

I first realized that when I played Modern Warfare 3 around the same time I
visited Prague. I pulled up the Prague level map and compared to the city map
and my photos; lo and behold, it turns out the city plan in the game was
completely made up, even though it features sorta-like real buildings.

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7952
Not sure why this is particularly exceptional. Very high resolution lidar has
been commercially available for a while. And the EA in the UK has released
approx 4 TB (compressed) under an open licence.

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hanoz
To be fair, at 300 points per square meter it's a lot higher res than the
highest EA 25cm resolution data, with its very patchy coverage. But the EA's
1m data covers about half the country so you're right, this featured NYU data
is a long way off being the "largest public LiDAR data set ever collected",
unless I'm missing something.

If anyone's interested, here's something I made with the Environment Agency
(and Natural Resources Wales) data:

[https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map](https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map)

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willvarfar
Fantastically beautiful!

Had this strange feeling as I was roaming, zoomed in so I had no idea where I
was, when suddenly I recognised a village - I've lived there!

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d33
I wonder if there are any privacy implications.

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anigbrowl
Not really given the existence of photography. I don't think the shape data
would be that much ore revealing.

