Project lucerne-by-byte
in Lucerne / Switzerland.
With a population
of about 180,000, the Lucerne metropolitan area is the sixth largest in
Switzerland. The beauty of the scenery, the cultural offerings and the
historical background are the main reasons why tourists flock to Lucerne.
A local company, Lucerne-by-Byte, decided to build a 3D model in order
to allow visitors to develop a much clearer perspective of the historic
center of the city than could ever be achieved with a simple map. The revenues
for the site are provided by merchants in the area who pay to have their
stores featured as part of the model. The idea is that tourists and residents
who use the model to plan their visit will also plan their lodging, dining
and shopping experiences. The company decided to build a 3D virtual reality
modeling language (VRML) model.
The key to completing
the model at a reasonable cost was developing the 3D CAD model that was
needed to begin the process of developing the VRML model. The number of
buildings included in the model meant that this would have been a time
consuming process using traditional surveying methods. Several teams of
surveyors would have been required and they would have had to spend months
on the project. The cost would have probably been somewhere on the order
of $1,000,000. The need to spend that much money would have threatened
the viability of the project. So, when I happened to send an email to the
company explaining my economical approach to developing 3D architectural
models, they contacted me right away. This kind of response isn’t unusual.
Article in
Professional Photographer (PDF-document, size 6 Megabytes)
