We’ve come a long way from Gutenberg’s printing press. Communicating your message is easier and faster today than at any point in history. Within minutes, you can publish a blog or build a website. Also within minutes, you can make maps for the world to see and have everything hosted in the ArcGIS Online cloud. Now you can just as quickly and easily communicate in 3D like never before using scenes. Scenes are like 3D maps but with additional controls for viewing location and lighting controls to deliver rich 3D experiences to broad audiences. You can share scenes with anyone using a modern web browser – no plug ins or logins required. You can also embed scenes in your websites or incorporate into Story Maps.
Across all industries ArcGIS users are communicating in 3D to:
- Visualize within the context of the real world
- Present information with more realism and remove interpretation
- Communicate with non-technical audiences
- Drive more informed decisions faster
Below is a collection of new scenes that illustrate the power of communicating in 3D. Explore and gain inspiration from this collection and others found in the Living Atlas of the World.
1) Visualize New Developments http://arcg.is/1LkC5TN
Over half the world’s population now lives in cities. Cities are dynamic ecosystems constantly changing to meet growing demands of urban populations. This scene illustrates a fictitious urban development project in the City of Portland, Oregon USA, and provides a means of visualizing proposed new developments within the context of the existing built environment. You can use scenes like this to communicate changes in a more realistic way with decision makers, stakeholder, and the public. Learn more about creating your own 3D city
2) The Field Neighborhood Park Shadow Impact Study
Story Map: http://arcg.is/1SLhV6f
The impact of shadows on public spaces is becoming an important regulatory topic as cities become more vertical. This story map describes a fictitious story of a city planner conducting a shadow impact study to help enact zoning regulations to ensure future developments do not create afternoon shadows on a new park. The analysis shown is part of a new 3D Cities workflow, which provides step-by-step instructions, tools, and sample data for conducting shadow impact analysis. The workflow calculates analytic information required in shadow impact regulations (e.g. net shadow increase) from cities like San Francisco, Boston, and Toronto.
3) Geodesign: Design for a Complex World
Story Map: http://arcg.is/1BFa7QB
Urban and regional planners use geodesign to envision better futures for communities and drive powerful decision making. Bringing geography to the planning process gives you context for anticipating trends and helping people make highly informed choices about their communities. This Story Map illustrates the 3 steps to getting started by combining the power of GIS with smart 3D city modelling to facilitate data visualization, scenario impact simulations, and storytelling.
4) Palm Beach County 3D Bathymetry
Story Map: http://arcg.is/1fRexdP
Web Scene: http://arcg.is/1h3hnwH
3D is not just about cities and buildings. This scene incorporates near shore bathymetric data captured from LiDAR down to 100 feet of depth. 2D polygon layers are overlaid to identify unique features such as coral reefs, areas where sand was dredged to replenish the beach, and areas of interesting benthic habitat. Using Story Maps are a great way to communicate your message and ensure your audience sees and understands your scene the way you intend. For more on incorporating your scene into a Story Map see this blog article: Using 3D web scenes in Story Maps redux.
5) Pictometry 3D Scene http://arcg.is/1ghCtaG
Pictometry is a leader in providing high quality photo textured 3D models. This scene combines Pictometry’s 3D buildings for San Francisco and Philadelphia with Esri server-based 3D streaming technology to deliver a rich 3D experience to the desktop and the browser without a plug in. Combine these two ingredients with your existing GIS layers to communicate across your organization.
6) Montreal, Canada Scene http://arcg.is/1U4izOu
This scene is an example of 3D city, containing like elevation, basemap, and 3D buildings. These layers form the foundational base layers for future work with other operational and analytic layers. This scene uses a ready-to-use 3D terrain layer and basemap hosted by Esri. The buildings are provided as open data through the City’s Open Data Portal [French] in GML format. The data were transformed into a geodatabase using tools and documentation provided on in the 3D Cities “Import and export CityGML data” workflow.
7) Berlin, Germany Scene http://arcg.is/1JbGrYU
This scene is another example of a 3D city. Similar to the Montreal scene the building data are provided through an open data portal and transformed into a geodatabase using CityGML conversion tools. Unique to the Berlin, Germany Scene is a high resolution terrain elevation layer added to the scene. The default 3D terrain provided in the ArcGIS Online web scene viewer includes 30 meter elevation data for the Berlin area. The City of Berlin provides an open 2 meter elevation layer, which was added to the scene to increase elevation accuracy and ensure the 3D objects align well with the terrain.
8) 3D GPS Activity: 33KM Bike Ride http://arcg.is/1HFIUuK
Sometimes scenes can just be about having fun. This web scene maps data from my bike GPS computer in 3D. Those who participate in human powered activities like cycling, running, or hiking understand that physical exertion increases when traveling uphill. Many sports activity apps will map your route and provide separate graphs for speed, heart rate, etc. The purpose of this scene is to combine all those elements in one place to better understand the interplay of heart rate, speed, and the terrain, and explore techniques for visualizing the data.
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