3. 3D Applications

Fly over

If a picture tells a thousand words, an animated video tells a million.

Valley of Yustid, Siberia, 2005. Based on Corona images.
Source: B. Van Bever


3D-video animations are the best way to get a complete survey of certain area in a very short time. It is as if you were in a small airplane flying over the area.

Flying over a landscape, which could be a city as well as a natural environment, gives you the opportunity to examine the surface, to zoom in to some interesting features, to change lighting to enhance these features.

How is this possible?

The camera onboard a satellite acquires images of an area. These images are used to create an elevation map (DEM), which can be used to create a 3D mesh of that area. Images are then draped over that mesh to create a 3D world.

Do you want to fly over New York? Let's do it!