You may have noticed the tag line on the landing page on the Bending Time web-site and wondered what it means. Or at least thought, is this guy for real? Well, someone typed this text!
It goes back to my ethos for the company: build a lifelike virtual world based on open data and make it free for everyone to access. Revenue would come from the monetization of goods and services provided in the world. Another way to say it, the lifelike virtual world Bending Time is building is, in spirit, owned by the people. All the people who manage and contribute to the OpenStreetMap project, the folks working at a nation’s federal level acquiring and publishing national datasets with an open license, GIS technicians at cities, surveyors, imaging satellite engineers, pilots flying optical and LiDAR sensors, etc., etc. and, don't forget the nation’s citizens paying taxes to their governments in order to make all this open data possible.
As a map aficionado, I have never had a problem getting motivated to collect and play with map data. It really can be considered a hobby of mine over the years. This hobby then turned into a core capability of Bending Time, which is the acquisition, validation, review, assessment, cleaning, reprojection, datum shifting, tiling and the hosting of open-license maps on servers in Bending Time’s cloud.
As a map aficionado, I have never had a problem getting motivated to collect and play with map data. It really can be considered a hobby of mine over the years. This hobby then turned into a core capability of Bending Time, which is the acquisition, validation, review, assessment, cleaning, reprojection, datum shifting, tiling and the hosting of open-license maps on servers in Bending Time’s cloud.
Bending Time Map Status 2017
Sometime after I put the company on hiatus, I was forced to shut down the virtual servers and virtual disks that hosted Bending Time’s map data. But I still maintain the data on external hard drives as that data represents hundreds of hours of download and processing time.
The data I collect varies from global datasets like NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), a staple digital elevation model (DEM) that still has value today, to local cities’ LiDAR and optical imagery like that which is available on the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Portal.
The data I collect varies from global datasets like NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), a staple digital elevation model (DEM) that still has value today, to local cities’ LiDAR and optical imagery like that which is available on the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Portal.
SRTM Elevation Tile
Vancouver Aerial Image Example
The last 20 years has seen significant and consistent growth of open map data across the globe as governments realized they benefit from releasing the data to the public even for commercial use. Easier access to the data reduces the friction for people creating value-added products and services. So much so that projects like OpenStreetMap are being used for commercial purposes (e.g., MapBox).
OpenStreetMap Example
Making map data open to the public is a fantastic first step by the global geospatial community. However, the process from acquiring the data to end use in an application is still a laborious task. In the case of a 3D globe, or video game streaming content, the data must be cleaned, standardized, optimized and, in the latter case of video games, artistically brushed up. Moreover, streaming the data means it must be hosted in a server somewhere that someone needs to pay for. Ultimately, making this productized data available in the cloud must be associated with business. That poses a challenge for the open data community. But I am confident that we can find creative ways to monetize goods and services in this new 3D frontier.
Ad astra!
--Sean
Ad astra!
--Sean
RSS Feed