The Use of Game Engines in GIS

Autodesk has been heavily investing in their 3D technology which includes bringing on 3D game developers to help with visualization. I imagine their pitch, Do you want to make millions programming games or change the world with 3D Studio Max?”.

Anyway I received this link to a company called Clover Point which is doing impressive things with 3D gaming engines and enterprise management with their Asset Tracking Anywhere. Yea I know what you are thinking, how could I possibly get excited about something as boring as enterprise management Well in my pervious life (before da cloud) I was heavily involved with asset management and CAFM. Now if you’ve ever been involved with this, you know how ugly the tools and how non-technical people have a great difficulty visualizing the data presented to them.

ESRI users take note:

Asset Tracking Anywhere also utilizes ESRIs ArcGIS Server. This suite of products offers advantages over standard map engines in the ease of data layering, data creation, data visualization, data capture, raster-to-vector translation and the manipulation of projection and coordinate systems.

Detailed 3D models and immersive views are a great way to showcase your resources to managers and help them visualize their assets around the world. Tabular reporting just doesn’t help people understand the impacts of planning and future changes to their business like a great 3D model. Of course 3D modeling in GIS has been very basic, so I’m happy to see companies pushing the envelope on this.

Check out some of Clover Point’s work in these YouTube videos. As I said, very impressive stuff. What I see here is BIM and GIS coming together to help people make informed decisions.


Tags
Thoughts

Date
December 13, 2009