United Kingdom

Data Sources

• the main government site is Ordnance Survey Maps - Britain's National Mapping Agency
  • their primary digital data products are in a collection called the OS MasterMap, although this doesn't seem to include elevation data
  • feature data in the MasterMap is encoded as GML 2.1.2
  • ...however, all of their data is expensive and highly restricted in usage
  • for example, before you can acquire any data, you must explain "length of time you wish to use the data and the number of terminals on which data will be used" (!!)
  • reportedly, a 3-year license to all features for the country costs £500,000 + VAT(!)
  • A word of caution: "Watch out for high costs, annual license fees and restrictive application agreements, sometimes you may only look at it! Check it out carefully. It's not like USA public domain data. One has to be very careful what one says, they may take legal action."
• OS scanned topo maps (e.g. 1:10k Scale Raster and 1:25k Scale Raster)
  • they look significantly different than USGS DRGs - houses are beige and individually sized, property extents often appear, and small roads appear with width rather than as lines
• there are services such as EDINA Digimap, Landmap and Chest / Cities Revealed which provide access to OS and other geospatial data, for specific educational institutions only
• Getmapping is the main commercial source of digital aerial photo data
• old-maps.co.uk provides browse-only access to UK digital historical maps, generally 19th century

Apps

• Photoscape 3D - see Location-specific Software Packages

Elevation Data

• for elevation data of all kinds, see Roger James' excellent page UK Digital Elevation Data
• DEM from the Ordnance Survey
  • the old standard product is 50m resolution, standard tile size is 20km (401x401 points)
    • (usage of) the data costs ~US$70 per 20km tile
    • first year license fee for the whole of the UK was ~US$30,000, with 10% annual maintenance fee
  • new product, 10m DEM, is called Land-Form PROFILE®
    • standard tile size is 5km
    • (1-year usage of) the data for the whole country costs £56,250 plus VAT (!) or £25 - £100 per tile per year for smaller areas
• DataStore is a commercial data provider
  • they sell NEXTMap Britain, 10m/5m DEM of the whole country
  • it was produced using IFSAR, so it will have issue with ground clutter like trees and buildings
  • they provide it in two forms:
    • as-is with the clutter, which they call Digital Surface Model (DSM)
    • a processed version with an attempt at removing the clutter, called "Bald Earth"
  • reportedly, "1 km sq. with a 25cm aerial drape comes in at around £165 ($250) ... I believe the terrain data was about £65 of that.  Prices drop with larger amounts."
• cleaned-up SRTM data (100m) is available from Geomantics Data Services
  • very inexpensive: £20 for each set, or £100 for all 6 sets covering the UK and Ireland

Projects

• Lattico Ltd. is working on 3D digital modeling project of the city of Cambridge, as well as some other UK cities.
  • They work heavily in the CAD environment with an architectural emphasis, using photogrammetry to collect data and working with the DWG format.
  • Images from their Cambridge model:
     
• Leeds 3D - Holbeck Urban Village
  • also called '3D CityScape', it is a project of the city of Leeds and GIS firm AMT3D to digitize a large section of the city that is being redeveloped
  • An earlier Leeds project involved VRML scenes of now and future for a new building in an area known as "The Calls"
  • A laser scanner will be used to capture the target building’s 3D geometric structure along with an integrated digital camera (mounted on the top of the scanner) to provide photographic texture.
  • They claim 'The 3D model can be viewed directly via a web browser or combined with CAD data to provide ‘in-context’ visualizations.  A new GUI is available based on 3D games technology for an interactive on-screen method of navigating in and around the CityScapes model."  This refers to the Quest3D architectural visualization engine.
  • As of February 2006 there are screenshots and small videos, but not yet anything interactive or downloadable from the AMT3D or Holbeck Urban Village websites.  Perhaps a Quest3D visualization is still in progress.
• Slyne-with-Hest
  • a village in northern Lancashire, modelled by inhabitant Roger James (Beard and Sandals Ltd.)
  • includes elevation, roads, buildings, and trees
• Bath Model
  • In 1991 CASA received a grant from J Sainsbury plc to construct a 3D model of Bath. This project was supported by Bath City Council and since its completion the model has been used to test the visual impact of a number of proposed developments on the city.
  • The model comprises over 150 urban blocks
  • You can buy (license) individual blocks, although they are not necessarily updated since the mid-90s
• the Norfolk Coast has been the subject of modelling for visualization in coastal zone management by Simon Jude of the UEA School of Environmental Sciences (University of East Anglia)
  • academic paper: Visualisation for Coastal Zone Management: A Case Study of the Norfolk Coast, England in which the use of virtual terrain is referred to as VRGIS
  • media coverage: Virtual reality solutions to coastal erosion
• the Isle of Man Agricultural Soils Group has done some modelling of the island
  •  with soil and land use maps draped over a DEM:
    
• Virtual Stonehenge: A LiDAR Survey Flythrough (vimeo video, Nov. 2007)
  • Shows the landscape around Stonehenge based on LIDAR from the UK Environment Agency.
  • By using LIDAR instead of surveys or aerials, features such as well-preserved barrows and subtle earthworks of prehistoric field systems are clearly visible.
  • A project of Wessex Archaeology, described on their blog entry The Stonehenge Landscape in 3D
    

London-specific/h3>

• the Virtual London project at CASA/UCL
  • For many years, there was an ambitious goal to build a huge, interactive London model
  • As of September 2005, article Virtual London unveils to fans, GIS Pro magazine describes that a small section is done
    • Two key requirements of the project: that the modelling should not have to rely on detailed architectural drawings, and that the material should reach as wide an audience as possible (i.e. via the Internet).
    • They are using ESRI ArcScene to do the modelling
    • 3% of the 45,000 building blocks had been photogrammetrically rendered (mainly key buildings), photo-realistic textured areas is even less at around 25 buildings plus 20 landmarks
  • funding is coming from the Greater London Authority and British Telecom
  • a side project has been trying to get the model running in the Far Cry game engine
  • related academic paper/website: Andrew Hudson-Smith, Digitally Distributed Urban Environments: The Prospects for Online Planning (or as a single pdf) - Chapter 9 in the PDF talk about Virtual London
• a separate, commercial model is 3D-London™: ImageCat's 3DCity™ Model for the City of London
  • detailed structural model of the more than 1,000 buildings
  • attributes include building height, number of stories, footprint area and location
  • claims to be 'compatible with Google Earth, ESRI software and other common GIS applications'
• Google 3D Warehouse Cities in Development: London
• Street sensation! - The liveliest streets in London has store-front images of over 2,500 shops, bars and restaurants, which would be great to map into a virtual scene
• the console title The Getaway (2003) included some of the most impressive city modelling to date, apparently the result of several years of hand-modelling by a large team of modelers, resulting in a reproduction of a large part of London, yet fitting within the limitations of the Playstation2