TeleAtlas to offer 3D Maps of Major Cities | GPS Lodge.com

Map supplier TeleAtlas plans on shipping 3D map data of large European and American cities by the end of 2006 - this is a pretty interesting innovation and it follows some of the Google Earth type applications that allow you to see a very real life view of a city as you are moving through it. So, by the end of this year, TeleAtlas is planning on shipping these new maps to major GPS companies like TomTom and Cobra. The question is, who is planning on bringing this innovation to the market first. I would assume that you are starting to talk about even bigger hard drives to handle the information. The other question is will the thing be useful and easy to understand whil you are driving the confusing streets of an unknown city.

The folks over at My TomTom GO are reporting this information.

"At the Independent Blackberry User summit held at the Hilton in Amsterdam last Thursday, Leon van de Pas, TeleAtlas' salesmanager Europe, claimed that the conversion from 2D to 3D maps is the most important development in 2006. "We use six camera's on all our map-data-collecting mobilhomes, and we also measure the height of the buildings with a gyroscope. Before the end of the year, we'll add 3D environments of large European cities to our maps." In this 3D mode, images are projected on the buildings in the cities, so the mapping experience become extremely realistic. Hundreds of employees in India are currently busy inputting the images into databases. The technology that is used for this project is called "mobile mapping", and was developed by Polish based GeoInvent, a company that was bought by TeleAtlas last year."

ReadMore at My TomTom GO

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