fritzvd

My last few posts have focused on somewhat other things than my thesis. This does not mean that no progress has been made or that I’ve done nothing. On the contrary; I’ve done quite a bit. But it is rather less exciting.

I’ve been busy with data conversion and trying to get a working 3D representation that is meaningful. Which is hard and not so spectacular. Seriously. First of all getting to grips with the fact that the reason why ESRI is marketleader may be because they deliver a complete and good package. My stubborn, innovative-creative side however always pushes me to look beyond the big things, before trying them out. That does not always pay off. Also trying out hip and open-source packages in Windows is just plain brutal. It sucks the life out of me. Cygwin/MinGW is utter pain, and Python for Windows is hell. Give me OS X or  Debian-linux anyday (apt-get FTW).

So now I am trying to make a 3d representation of things with ArcGIS (ArcMap and ArcScene). But even then trying to deal with different formats remains a chore.

After this, and only after this I have to even more conversions to get it going in any Augmented Reality or 3D instance online or on a smartphone. The best to go for now is ArcScene -> export 3D (VRML) -> Open in Meshlab -> export to 3Ds or DAE. Which is a sucky workflow, but like, whatever.

So there’s that.