Gaming in the virtual real world

Google's 3D Warehouse is a repository of user-generated 3D models that can be viewed in Google Earth. Anybody can build models using Sketchup and contribute them to the collection. People have already modeled lots of buildings, bridges, and in some cases entire cities (see Adelaide for example). In true user-generated content style, users can vote on the quality of the models and the best of them are then included by default in Google Earth.

Since the modeling data is free to use/reuse and in an open format (KML), it looks particularly interesting from a data integration perspective. As this collection grows, it should provide a fun dataset for research in spatial data integration. One simple integration problem that comes to mind is:

"find me an office in downtown LA with price less than X and a view out to the ocean"

Answering this query would involve integrating data from different real estate websites along with the 3D building models. Another example integration problem, this time for terrorism defense:

"find all rooftops with a clear line of sight onto a convoy traveling along roads XYZ"

In this case, vector data (street maps) would need to be integrated with the 3D building models.

Anyway, the point of this post was to highlight something very cool (and not so research related) that I saw on the blog digital urban. In the post, the writers take the free content from the 3D Warehouse and add it to a video game, so that game play can take place in a real (virtual) city instead of an imagined one. There is a video of an attack helicopter flying around over London! Looks like you'll soon be able to defend (or invade) your favorite tourist destination.