Seminář: Virtual model of Prague as a by-product of marvellous entertainment

The long-term goal of the Praha4D project (www.Praha4D.net) is to build a virtual model of the city of Prague where users could move freely both on the ground (walk or ride in a vehicle) and in the air (like flying in a helicopter). But the most significant feature is the incorporation of time — on small scale (movement of vehicles and eventually of people too), on mezzo scale (weather changes, day and night, seasons of the year) and especially on large scale (historical development of urban settlement). It is probably not possible in the time-span of a single life to fullfil such a goal. But even gathering all the necessary data and the work on model itself is a great adventure and entertainment. Many interesting facts and techniques are learned and many interesting people are met. There will be presented selected techniques for data preparation and applications developed specially for this project. This concerns preparation of base maps, textures and 3D-models or creation of an audio-archive with recordings of city and vehicle sounds. An application for virtual traffic control will be presented too that was necessary to control behaviour of vehicles in prepared video clips (see e.g. http://www.praha4d.net/vart/osmicka.html). (The slides are in Czech.)