What started as a promotional and educational project for Birmingham became a visionary application of Second Life. by using data streams and Seconds Life’s open scripting and translational properties (it is quite easy to tell a script to build display a three-dimensional object based on received data in Second Life) Daden Limited created one of the most interesting Mash Ups I’ve seen in Second Life so far.
By combining the CNN (or BBC) newsfeed, Google Earth and Google Maps’ geographical data, NewsGlobe for the search function and Second Life’s ability to combine these streams into interactive, visual data, they created the ‘Virtual Briefing Hub’. A ’station’ able to combine and display data in a Google Earth styled manner, but adding panoramic views and other information in the same visualisation. I was also very impressed by Google’s amazing data inter-operability.
“There are a wide variety of ways in which the hub can now be used, For instance iCentrum (another Digital Birmingham partner) is providing us with datasets of medical facilities across the city. We also see applications around planning, infrastructure management and inward investment.”
To illustrate these future plans and applications further, Daden Limited provided a very interesting paper on the application of virtual world for cities. The main applications listed and explained in the paper are:
- Governance and Public Meetings
- Planning
- Inward Investment
- Tourism
- Community Development
- Infrastructure Management
- Public Order
- Service Delivery
- Cultural Development
- Education
- Health
- Commerce
- Social Exclusion
- Employment
I can tourist information and travel agencies really benefit from the visualisation of various data sources, think what the addition of weather forecasts, tourist attractions in the area, combined with panoramic shots and three-dimension ‘teaser’ overviews of various cities or even comments/recommendations to these area’s would do in the purchase process of potential customers…
Get the ‘Towards a Virtual Birmingham’ white paper here, or visit the Virtual Briefing Hub in Second Life here. Source and further information on the ‘Virtual Briefing HUB’ project can be found here.
Posted on: July 16, 2008 | Share on:
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