3-D Cartography...

Once again, one of my favorite parts of cartography. I think that everyone had a globe when they were a kid. It just seems to me that, for some reason, you ended up getting one for either your birthday or Christmas. Now, in the realm of globes, we all know from experience of receiving at least one throughout our lives that they are not all created equal. Take the standard generic globe for instance. These are all properly labeled with cartographic rules in mind, but lack any real creativity. They may include very cheaply made parts as well as a some very boring color schemes. Now we will travel to the other end of the spectrum where globes are made of exotic rocks and weigh in the neighborhood of 30-40 lbs. These globes may not have the most interesting color schemes, but the intrigue is really the fact that it is made of different types of rock while still keeping the proper proportions of the earth in mind. But...there is that globe somewhere in between that isn't really all that expensive, but shows us things that neither of the two before mentioned globes do and that is contour. Granted, only the largest of the land features can be represented because of the surface being represented, but these 3-D globes allow their audience to recognize some of the earths more prominent land features and even the occasional day dreamer to have thoughts of what each of those places would be like in real life. This is my earliest exposure to 3-D cartography.

Now days, 3-D cartography is being used by taking satellite imagery and creating different contours through G.I.S.. Although the paper is flat, by making these maps with the shading in the right place, they can appear to be 3 dimensional. This not only aids the viewer in seeing what that location would look like in real life, but it allows the cartographer to capture the interest of their audience much quicker. The cartographer also has the ability to influence the focus of the audience such as in this 3-D map to the right. This map has a lot of information in the foreground, but the 3 dimensional mountains in the background capture the audiences attention first. Simply put, contour is more interesting if you are looking at this map for the first time.

Although 3-D maps aren't very useful for navigation when distance is being tracked manually, it is extremely useful for someones first exposure to an area. While in the military, we could use this type of imagery to plan flight routes and outline possible enemy locations if the intelligence agency didn't have information for the area we were operating in.

Hiking is another area where 3-D imagery could prove very useful. Although most 3-D cartography doesn't include ways of measuring distance covered, you can plan a route very effectively by analyzing terrain ahead of time and outlining possible dangers. This makes the trip much more familiar when using a standard UTM topographic map.

All in all, I find 3-D cartography amazing and enjoy using it from time to time. Although I don't use it for critical purposes like the ones I discussed before, I do enjoy using functions of "Google Earth" to see what things really look like compared to just a simple flat image and I'm very excited to see what developments take place within 3-D cartography in the future.