Web/Tech

What do all these images have in common? Well, immediately, it’s quite
obvious: they are all 3D models of landscapes. But the thinking, the
execution, and the technology behind them is fascinatingly different. And yet
all are enticing in some way or another – the still images are not sufficient,
and the viewer yearns to touch, to interact, to play with them.

I will readily confess to a couple of fascinations: three-dimensional models
of how our planet works, and connections , those odd intersections between
the seemingly different. I wrote a little about the first fascination in
celebrating the early personal influence of the models such as the one in the
centre, above, for an Accretionary Wedge event a couple of years ago with the
theme [Inspiration - the beginnings of a geologist](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2009/07/inspiration
—the-beginnings-of-a-geologist.html) .

…the book which I now appreciate fired my fascination with geology was
The Earth’s Crust—A New Approach to Physical Geography and Geology.
Published in 1951, it was called “a new approach” because Dudley Stamp
commissioned huge, detailed models of different landscapes—and what lies
beneath them—to be made in exquisite detail by Tom Bayley, a lecturer in
sculpture, and photographed in colour for the book.

Fascination number one in many respects lay behind my [previous post](https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2011/12/playing-
with-sand-and-fire-and-tsunamis-and-who-knows-what-else.html) on the brilliant
linkage between sand box modelling and digital technology, Simtable (bottom
left, above). I was delighted that Simtable’s inventor, Stephen Guerin,
immediately commented, and included a link to Solid Terrain Modeling
, who print high quality graphical data on to 3D landscape models (top left,
above). All of this started to stimulate fascination number two, and I found
myself visualising some the wonderfully dynamic stream table modelling
capabilities that Steve Gough’s Little River Research and Design
produces (top right, above). I enjoy following Steve’s activities,
developments and applications (entertainingly chronicled on his blog),
and I began to wonder if there wasn’t some interesting intersection potential
between the Simtable technology and his. I dropped Steve an email and, in
spite of being caught up in the challenges of exhibiting – in the end,
successfully (see his blog) - at the AGU conference in San Francisco, he
replied immediately and commented on the blog post. He provided a link to a
description of the
[SandyStation](http://www.gizmag.com/turning-
a-sandbox-into-an-ecosystem-with-the-xbox-kinect/20700/) , an invention by
two students at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in the Czech
Republic, that cleverly combines a physical sand box and the digital
technology of the Xbox Kinect (lower right, above).

And then , in browsing around for images, I happened upon [this description](http://createdigitalmotion.com/2011/07/in-
sand-and-pixels-playing-with-worlds-virtual-and-tangible-built-with-kinect/)
of what seems like essentially the same conspiracy of sand and the Xbox, but
invented by game developers in the Netherlands:

In a refreshingly different take, the world of the game Mimicry is the
“ultimate sandbox game” – set in a literal sandbox. Participants manipulate
piles of real sand, as Kinect-powered cameras track their work and project
imagery onto the sand from a rendered analog version of the same world. The
player mimics the virtual, the virtual mimics the player, and the stuff of
each fuse in a real/virtual hybrid in sand.

I’m a little confused by this, but that’s not my point. It simply seems to me
that here are multiple possibilities for connections, for educational and
other applications that might generate examples of the whole being greater
than the sum of the parts. And one thing that’s compelling about much of the
imagery from all of these activities? They all feature interaction, the
satisfaction of being able to touch – and to play.

[Images from Simtable, Solid Terrain Modeling, SandyStation, and Little River Research and Design]

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/webtech/