| Real-time Plants Awarded |
Winner of the Best Practice Award 2006The award winning application "Lenné3D-Plantage module" extends the functionality of LandXplorer™, the 3D GIS solution from the Potsdam software company 3D Geo GmbH, with which digital city and terrain models can be visualised. Now with the Plantage module these models can include photo-realistic, three-dimensional, real-time plants.The industry initiative "We Make IT.BerlinBrandenburg" and the Federation of Software, Information and Communication Industry in Berlin and Brandenburg (SIBB) had invited nominations from Berlin and Brandenburg businesses. The nominees products and services were evaluated from the following four specialisms: E-Government, Geo-information, Mobility and Communication, and IT Security. Eight outstanding products and services were selected, offering high usability and a proven success in real-world practice. The director of the department of visualization and data analysis at the Zuse institute Berlin, and responsible for R&D within Lenné3D, Hans Christian Hege, said "the high-performance base technology for the interactive computation of complex 3D-Vegetation was at ZIB developed. Until now no-one could reach that quality of real-time visualisation using conventional PCs. That was the role of time intensive and costly 'render farms' for Hollywood productions." The managing director of the Lenné3D GmbH, Philip Paar, feels motivated by the honour: "We would like to 'green' the grey 3D city models with our award winning technology. The green movement should also not be underestimated in the virtual world." Previously the user saw himself confronted with numerous problems when representing interactive vegetation: Earlier, only 2D 'Billboard' textures have been used, which became 'pixelated' at close distances, as well as appearing extremely 2D, like cardboard cut-outs, when viewed directly from above. Finally the users' requests for central-european plant species remained mostly unfulfilled. |