March 15, 2007

NAVTEQ 3-D City Models

NAVTEQ announced the availability of a new suite of Visual Content designed to enhance the digital map experience by providing relevant visual context for users of location-based and navigation applications. Two types of content are being launched: three-dimensional models of major cities and three-dimensional landmarks of prominent and important structures in and around those cities. That should make navigation a very different experience. I would imagine that this will add a burden to the GPS unit in terms of storage space and video display capabilities. If you thought 3-D capabilities were good now, I can’t wait for this. Hummm, so who uses NAVTEQ predominantly? Garmin and Magellan.... If this is as good as NAVTEQ says it is and can be implemented quickly, expect a GPS with this capability before the holidays, if not straight forward, look for it at CES or CeBit in 2008.

More after the jump...

“The consumers with whom we’ve conducted research are wowed by the visual impact of this content, but once they see it at work in a system, they understand it’s even more valuable in terms of providing context and enhancing their ability to follow and even anticipate their system’s guidance instructions,” said Cliff Fox, Senior Vice President, NAVTEQ Map.
NAVTEQ’s Visual Content has been thoughtfully designed to balance the enormous amounts of data that could be provided with the most relevant and useful data. NAVTEQ’s locally based geographic analysts have helped define the boundaries of the coverage areas for City Model content to include the areas most important to locals and visitors. Landmarks are chosen based on regional popularity, location, historical and architectural significance.

“As systems’ data capacities increase, we’re excited by the potential for customizable and useful content like our new Visual Content suite. At the same time, we’ve worked hard to flexibly design our product to give our customers the multiple resolution levels and data choices that respect system size constraints and allow for application differentiation,” said Fox.

Visual Content is geo-referenced to the NAVTEQ map and has, where necessary, been manually aligned with the existing street network to ensure an accurate routing experience and correct placement vis-a-vis other parts of the road. In keeping with NAVTEQ’s single global database specification, Visual Content products are offered in a consistent format to help facilitate time-to-market and improve application development timing.

3D City Models and Landmarks are available for major cities in Europe, North America and Asia.