

Edushi: Beautiful, isometric city maps for China - drinian
http://hongkong.edushi.com/?L=en

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carbon8
These are pretty, but they are not accurate. These are not just inaccuracies
due to omission, either; there are innumerable added elements that don't
actually exist.

The inaccuracies are actually very interesting since I can't fathom why the
creators think it's OK. The high level of detail on a map suggests accuracy,
which is deceptive. It's one thing to add obvious design elements outside of
the context of the information, but in this case they've actually decided to
be creative with the information itself.

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kiwidrew
I spent some time in Hangzhou (near Shanghai) last year, and remember asking
around about online maps -- none of the usual suspects like Google had
anything for China at the time. Everyone pointed me at the edushi.com (which
means "e-city" in Mandarin) and it truly amazed me the first time I saw it! It
reminded me of the Sim City scenarios that were based around real cities.. All
of the buildings are modeled quite accurately, even individual trees and small
landscaping details are represented. I guess that's what happens when labour
is cheap and there are lots of aspiring art students without many good job
prospects. :)

(The company behind the maps, Aladdin Information Technology, is based in
Hangzhou. I can't wait until they expand to non-Chinese cities around the
world!)

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anigbrowl
_Build spaceport: You do not have enough points to do that._

It is very impressive, although I would have liked to be able to rotate around
the compass - but presumably they are using the fake 3d to keep load times
down, especially given the potential for traffic spikes on the Chinese
internet. Obviously there is some potential for painting over any
underisarable information (no half-finished buildings here, everything is neat
and shiny!), but there is also utility in the 'cartooned' abstraction. I
wonder to what extent it was generated vs. hand-textured.

Also a good excuse to repost this: <http://www.c3technologies.com/> (warning,
noisy video autostart). Astounding working demo under 'Reference' menu.

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hyperbovine
Pretty, but of questionable utility.

