GTA NOKIA HERE Maps: VideoGame designer brings immersive real 3D environments to HERE Maps

A cool article over at Nokia’s HERE 360 blogs talks about the construction of 3D maps through the eyes of a video game designer.

When we talk about a 3D open world game set in real cities, the first thing that came to my mind was Grand Theft Auto. As it turns out, Michael Limberat the Sandiego Here Maps office, was co-founder of Angel Studios. They were acquired in 2003 by Rockstar Games and still to this day utilise game play mechanics in GTA releases.

Nowadays, there’s a higher demand for a cinematic 3D world experience in mapping. Maps are now living canvases.

At HERE, they’re building proprietary tools for creating and editing a 3D Map making it easier to manipulate and integrate features and functions as well as all the 2D data. There’s also the balance between usability and performance – imagine all the data that would need to be downloaded and processed.

As part of the testing process, Michael and his team have built 55 kilometres of central Chicago. Simulated driving equipment can take on these real 3D environments. These are very different to the 3D HERE Maps used by essentially wrapping picture data over 3D data points (C3 Maps).

Source: HERE

Cheers Viipottaja for the tip!

Category: Nokia