[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lcja6HkRuw[/youtube]
The company C3 Technologies presented at CES 2011 an application for iOS which allow view maps in 3D format from any iDevice. The C3 company used a 3D map mapping system used until then only in the army and the result is truly spectacular. The application presented by them at CES 2011 works on both iOS and Android, but since then and until now there has been no discussion at all about the Swedish company. Yesterday it was discovered that C3 Technologies no longer has a website and that the majority of the company's shares were sold by Saab to a company from the "west" and this is where the speculations begin.
C3's models are generated with little human intervention. First, a plane equipped with a custom-designed package of professional-grade digital single-lens reflex cameras takes aerial photos. Four cameras look out along the main compass points, at oblique angles to the ground, to image buildings from the side as well as above. Additional cameras (the exact number is secret) capture overlapping images from their own carefully determined angles, producing a final set that contains all the information needed for a full 3-D rendering of a city's buildings. Machine-vision software developed by C3 compares pairs of overlapping images to gauge depth, just as our brains use stereo vision, to produce a richly detailed 3-D model.
"Unlike Google or Bing, all of our maps are 360° explorable," says Smith, "and everything, every building, every tree, every landmark, from the city center to the suburbs, is captured in 3-D—not just a few selected buildings
Although no one knows exactly to whom the C3 company was sold, it is speculated that it would be Apple, Google or Microsoft, but the focus is on Apple or Google considering that at CES 2011 applications for Android and iOS were presented. Google already has a 3D map mapping system, so theoretically it would no longer need such a thing, but Apple does not have one and users have been asking for the implementation of one for some time. If Apple had acquired C3 Technologies, then the implementation of the mapping system could take place sometime next year when iOS 6 will be officially launched.
An iOS application that would allow viewing maps in 3D format would represent a great big step forward for Apple, but we still have a long time to wait until we see something like this on our iDevices.
