June 11, 2007

Manchester Cathedral 3D imagery - impressive and now used on new Sony game

Interesting news on CNN today as Sony seems to be in trouble with a church in the UK. Apparently the company has released a game that has players shooting up aliens inside a Cathedral. The church is upset for obvious reasons but what's interesting is that the photo-realistic 3D renderings of the Cathedral may become part of a huge legal matter. CNN seemed to indicate that the church wasn't sure how the 3D renderings were obtained but that the 3D imagery was very similar to what is available on the Cathedral's website. Perhaps the company that developed the imagery was contacted by Sony or ?? It should be noted that indeed an impressive 3D tour is provided when you access the following website - http://www.manchestercathedralonline.co.uk/gallery.html the 3D virtual tour can be seen at http://www.mindwave.co.uk/manchestercathedral/. This technology comes from Mindwave (http://www.mindwave.co.uk/). Of interest, as I write this message Google Earth is making CNN headlines once again as there are now more calls for obscuring sensitive information from Google earth imagery. At the heart of the matter is the recently foiled terrorist attack on JFK airport. Google is boasting that much of the imagery is available via public sources.. so who's task is it to blurr out sensitive areas. Perhaps an even better question is what constitutes a sensitive area? Couldn't this include shopping malls, theatres, schools, public buildings, airports, ports, bus stations....

No comments: