Remember when I said I could see the outline of my apartment building on the Scion xB's navigation system? Well, the Cadillac CTS tops that. This navi adds little 3D animated versions of really tall and/or noteworthy buildings. As you can see from the photo above, the digital version is pretty darn close to the actual thing. If you scan left on the map, another similar building down the street is shown along with a digital rendering of one of the LACMA buildings.
Although this mostly seems like a "Hey, look what we can do!" feature, it's probably not a bad idea to have renderings of notable landmarks to assist in navigation.
I really want to know how they do it, though. Does someone go around taking pictures of random, big buildings and then hand them off to 3D animators to create the buildings? And what does Manhattan look like? I'll have to check that sometime.
James Riswick, Automotive Editor @ 14,157 miles
billt9 says:
06:03 PM, 10/ 7/08
Wow that's pretty cool. The building is facing 70 degrees the wrong way, but that's pretty cool.
Google Earth does this too but that program is mostly for novelty.
adavis2493 says:
07:22 PM, 10/ 7/08
that sky is beautiful
carmizvi says:
09:05 PM, 10/ 7/08
When I was looking for a new GPS device earlier this year, I came across a model from HP that offered similar 3D renderings of major buildings in urban areas.
It's a super idea, because it enhances situational awareness and reduces "linger" time as you try to align what you glimpse on the screen with the real world around you. The closer the experience, the more time you can theoretically spend keeping yourself from plowing into said buildings.
This is very cool. I suspect this'll be one of the big "must haves" before long.
stovt001 says:
11:27 PM, 10/ 7/08
Very nice camera skills, I must say. That is one crisp picture and yes, the southern California sky has been fairly decent recently.
dougtheeng says:
05:32 AM, 10/ 8/08
There are a lot of people who render buildings as a hobby, resulting in many, many renderings on Google Earth and around the internet. Its likely the same people that did the work for this GPS.
jaeger1 says:
07:42 AM, 10/ 8/08
That's cool.
ahightower says:
11:37 AM, 10/ 8/08
Agree that's pretty cool. Landmarks on the horizon help if you miss a sign with street names or exit numbers. I am curious to see how it would look in a downtown area.
banhugh says:
12:05 PM, 10/ 8/08
Getting Streetview from Google maps in the GPS navi screen of your car would be cool. This is just the beginning towards that direction