The First and Second Editions of the 3D Atlas of Ann Arbor captured seven years of work on this topic prior to June, 2007.  While the earlier files in that work are important to understand the development of the project and also to track how technological and planning development did or did not mesh, the more recent files in it appear of greater interest to most.  To interact with the virtual reality in some of those files, a free browser plug-in is needed; Cortona is one option. 

     In Google Earth^® one has simultaneously a browser, a 3D navigational tool, and more.  Thus, it is important to attempt to capture all of the previous 3D Atlas work within the Google Earth^® context and it was to that task that the Second Edition of the 3D Atlas of Ann Arbor was devoted.  This third edition greatly expands the base of buildings with textures, including many on the campus of The University of Michigan.  Indeed, in this volume, one can view the buildings of the university in the context of 3D models of all of Ann Arbor.  Thus, the entire city is modeled.   The models in this book also appear in the Google 3D Warehouse:  in the Google Picks section, under Featured Modelers (Arlinghaus is "Archimedes" in the 3D Warehouse world) as well as in the "Cities in Development" section and in the "Help Model a City" section.  In the latter, readers are invited to put textures on existing models in order to create a larger virtual Ann Arbor.  The hope is also that readers of this book will consider participation in that effort, as well!  The reader of this book will need to download a free version of Google Earth^® in order to understand the content.  It is highly recommended that the reader do so right now, before proceeding with the remainder of the work.

     As Google Earth^®and Google SketchUp^® have both broadened and facilitated the technological 3D modeling scene, deeper reflection on the pair in an academic context is interesting, as well.  When thinking of making models, one might think only of making them in Google SketchUp^®.  There, numerous tutorials walk the user through the intricacies of making highly detailed, realistic models of buildings, furniture, or whatever else one might imagine.  As long as the models are only for Google SketchUp^®, the enthusiastic user tends to get more and more involved in making "accurate" representations of objects.  When these models are also to be uploaded into Google Earth^®, and viewed at a variety of geographical scales, perhaps in conjunction with many other models, a host of other issues enters the picture.  Now, both the worlds of art and of mathematics enter -- at the theoretical level.  From the standpoint of art, realism may not be as important in the Google Earth^® setting as is "impressionism"--create the correct impression of the building and use very few textures, keeping file size small.  As Renoir painted a red hat in detail on the woman in "Sur la Terrace," while leaving the background vague, the careful modeler may focus on a block M on a golf course clubhouse chimney seen from a busy street rather than on "accurate" textures of all sides.  The recognition of the building in Google Earth^® comes from selecting features that people relate to and recognize quickly:  that is the art in moving across the Google interface from SketchUp^® to Earth^®.  Indeed, it is that interface itself, or transformation from one software package to another, that is of critical importance to successful modeling.  Perhaps it is not surprising that the 3D modeling environment came to recognize that fact, much as 20th century mathematics came, in the last half of that century, to focus on the transformations themselves rather than on acquisition of knowledge about the objects linked by those transformations.  The Google SketchUp^®/Earth^® pairing, and the associated transformation it represents, is a bold step in moving forward:  now,  the focus in the virtual world, as well as in the mathematical world, is on transformations.


Sandra Lach Arlinghaus,
June 1, 2007, Ann Arbor, MI.


Link to Google Earth^®.

Copyright, 2007.  All rights reserved.  Institute of Mathematical Geography.