The non-profit Wessex Archaeology organization created a virtual fly-over of Stonehenge and vicinity based on LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data collected from the air. From the project page:
During production of the animation, we turned the LIDAR data into a solid 3D model of whole landscape surrounding Stonehenge. Aerial tours of the most famous sites and monument groups were animated in HD (720i) resolution. What is exciting is that much of the upstanding archaeology, from well-preserved barrows to the subtle earthworks of prehistoric field systems, are clearly visible.The Stonehenge Landscape in 3D (via Daily Grail)To do this, we had to work out how to use the data at 1:1 for our animations (for this kind of task it is often necessary to reduce the complexity of the data by half or quarter (1:2 or 1:4) due to enormous memory and processing requirements). This we achieved, and using lighting techniques we have been able to show the archaeology of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site as it has never been seen before.
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The video could use narration or more labels. It was hard to tell the monuments from the trees.
CIA/NSA's about 10-12 years ahead of this. Just throwin' it out there.
Perhaps, but it was put together for people who already know what they're looking at.
Don't want to be that guy, but why is the landscape beige? It looks like a desert, not England's green and pleasant land.
@freshacconci - That's actually a very good question. It's a neutral colour because we need to strip away all that green vegetation that we know and love to see the underlying form of the ground. It's the subtle features where people once 'worked' the ground into burial mounds, pathways, fields, etc that we want to see more clearly. It's all about the earthworks ;-)
I don't really explain it very well in the linked article on the Wessex Archaeology website and as @akhen3sir points out, we too often aim things at other archaeologists. I'll do something about that.
I'm glad that this work is generally interesting enough for Boing Boing!
actually, that makes sense. thanks!
The LiDAR data renders trees that read to my untrained eye as tall building or monoliths. So this version requires viewer work, not necessarily a bad thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/ProdMgt/Aerial/Pages/LiDARBasicS.aspx
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Stonehenge,+UK&sll=51.179082,-1.826305&sspn=0.039709,0.083084&ie=UTF8&hq=Stonehenge
Or I guess I could wait for the Discovery channel to eventually do a version with animated arrows, labels, captions, wind swooshes, Druidic chanting and deep-voice narration.
This is great, we covered it a short while back at Heritage Key. We've also got a Virtual Stonehenge in the making right now, come and take a look at some of our recent screenshots at http://heritage-key.com/stonehenge-virtual
Very interesting!
I must be missing something here - why aren't any newer buildings etc visible?
Nice work Tom, and for EMJ - the newer features are visible, look again, how about an whole army camp!