4Sight Combines Virtual Reality and Direction of Spatial Development
Spatial Developments in 3D, 4D and 5D
The rise of commercial applications with 3D-visuals is unstoppable. The Dutch-Swedish company 4Sight develops successful 3D- and 4D-visuals of spatial projects of governments, real estate developers and housing corporations. Interactive virtuals with a high level of detail are built from GIS- and CAD-data, among others, so that clients will have a better view on the final plans.
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Erik Tissingh (left) and Mark Berntssen (right) of 4Sight. |
By Eric van Rees
This way of working saves much time, prevents misunderstandings and yields more understanding between citizens, governments and market parties. What’s exceptional, is that 4Sight works with visual techniques from the gaming-industry. New techniques promise even more ways of visualising for the future.
Succes Stories
Despite all the success stories of really good visualisations of pure technical software as CAD and GIS, the world is still waiting for successful applications. An exception to this rule is 4Sight, a Dutch-Swedish company that creates 3D- and 4D-visuals of spatial projects of governments, real estate developers and housing corporations.
4Sight originated from a cooperation between the Dutch company 4Motion ‘Direction in spatial development’ and the Swedish company Sightline Vision. Since eight years, 4Motion has been active in The Netherlands with advising and supporting commissioners in order to realise spatial development. Since many years, Sightline Vision produces visuals of spatial development for the Swedish market. 4Motion is occupied with spatial municipal and commercial development and organisational- and project management. Erik Tissingh and Mark Berntssen (both 4Sight) explain the reason for approaching Sightline: “We noticed that governments and developers lost up to eighty percent of their time, communicating about their plans. This caused a lot of misunderstanding and loss of time. No more inconceivable decisions as a result of misinterpretation and an insufficient supply of information. That’s why we’re working together with Sightline and try to broaden the acceptence at our clients by creating realistic visualisations of their plans. The supply of information is more clear and reliable, which makes the public discussion more effective and, above all, more satisfying”.
 Visualisation of the current N302 near the municipality of Harderwijk, coupled with a traffic simulation in
the authority of project office N302. |
True to Life
The visuals from Sweden consist of graphics, animated movies and interactive 3D/4D-models. Users are able to move fully through the virtual surroundings by means of a joystick, so that it’s just like playing a Virtual Reality game. The interface that 4Sight uses to realise this, is the self-developed ‘Neo’, that makes use of visualising techniques from the ‘gaming-industry’. “The level of detail of our visuals is extraordinary high: you can see the brake lights on driving cars and who zooms in to a tree, will see the grains of every leaf.” Erik Tissingh tells: “The basis of all our products is that everything has to be true to life and look good. The level of detail in the models ensures that people believe the information supply about the total project, even the opponents of spatial plans. Credibility leads to faith and faith leads to consensus.” Neo can also be linked to traffic engineering models, so that current and future traffic streams can displayed realistically”.
An example of this is the project N302 of the Province of Gelderland and the municipality of Harderwijk, which are both located in the Netherlands. 4Sight made a design of the infrastructure of the N302 (a provincial road, see figure 2) in a 3D-model in which also Harderwijk has been built in 3D. The model was used to show citizens of Harderwijk the consequences of the project for their daily activities by displaying the relations and borders during which the project was going to take place. The model has been used during presentations of the municipality and the concerned parties. An example: “Companies are worried about the accessibility when a project starts and citizens complain about the possible inconvenience. We succeeded in taking away much turmoil during a meeting with both parties where different scenarios have been visualised. What you can see is a better quality of the information, because now everyone knows what will happen, once they’ve seen the visuals.” This way of information leads to confidence in the commissioner and also to 4Sight, who acts as an extension of the commissioner.
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“The basis of all our products is that everything has to be true to life and look good”.
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Reconstruction
The commissioners wanted to have the whole municipality of Harderwijk built after in 3D. This has many advantages, according to Berntssen: “When the model is finished at last, there is a basis to build upon and the investment can be carried by multiple projects and during a number of years.” The model will be used in the continuation of the reconstruction of the N302 by the Province of Gelderland and Harderwijk for the supporting of the construction process.
The benefit of 4Sight’s visuals are also noticed by property developers and housing corporations. A project movie shows the view a newly-built apartments complex. Apart from the view, also the light incidence has been simulated. Now, a real estate agent can make a price index based on the model, in which the user can freely move around with a joystick and view, for instance, the light incidence during different times a day and even per season. It’s interesting to see how detailed the interior of the apartments is, from the furniture to the paintings on the walls. Both interior and exterior are looking similarly detailed. Is the Neo-interface both CAD and GIS at the same time? Tissingh: “We do use geodata of municipalities, such as aerial photography and 2D map data. To be able to link these data, we must make use of Open Source.” Primary focus will stay the visualisation of a plan, and not analysis, such as is the case with GIS.
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Visualisation of a new construction project. |
Not Unnoticed
4Sight’s visuals were not unnoticed internationally. In the autumn of 2007 the company won a prize for its 4D-visuals services of traffic flows, on a international congress, organised by PTV, the world’s market leader on traffic engineering models. 4Sight, in combination with Vissim, a traffic engineering model, was chosen as the best out of more than 20 contributors.
When asked about the names of competitors, both remain silent. “To be honest, there is no direct competitor of 4Sight, because no one provides the combination of graphics and planning such as we do”. The technique of the Swedish Sightline has developed in such a way that they have a giant lead in the Netherlands and Belgium. At this moment we are talking with a possible partner in the US, and the same goes for a possible partner in the Netherlands, such as Cyclomedia. “They have visuals of fronts, that can be used in our Neo-model. They data is there, but the challenge is making the technique accessible for a large audience.” Both are seeing a move in the demand from 3D to 4D and 5D, which means to all sorts of calculation models in which, for example, a time dimension and traffic simulations are included. An application of this is to decide whether engineering activities are preferred to be executed, at night or during the daytime. Also, by means of a fifth dimension, other business processes can be included, such as 3D-visuals of building expenses or building schemes in time.
For the future, both are expecting much of the possibilities of data streaming on the internet, to be able to put all projects in one world map instead of separate models, which is what happening at the moment. Another possibility is crowd simulation, where crowds of pedestrians are simulated in sports arenas or metro stations, to be able to see how safety scenario’s work out in real-time. This way, future events can be coordinated in a better way. To be able to stream visuals on the internet and desktop computers, a new interface will be introduced: Neo-lite. “The progressing technology generates new questions from our clients, so it’s necessary to respond to this trend as a company”.
Eric van Rees evanrees@geoinformatics.com is editorial manager for GeoInformatics. For more information: www.4sightonline.nl
