There’s no dearth of travel web sites on the Web. And 3D renderings of complex environments are commonplace in gaming environments. But putting the two together? That’s almost unique. 3rd Planet, has been teasing us with this prospect since they came out of stealth mode over the summer. They finally opened up their virtual travel service in December with a tour of the holy sites of Nepal’s Katmandu, a travel experience that could be part of your next staycation.
Google’s browser-based Street View has had limited 3D touring capability for a few historically-oriented locations–the Roman Forum, Baths of Diocletian, and other UNESCO world heritage areas–that are based on videos from their fleet of camera cars. Virtual travelers–vravelers?–have lots of control as they navigate past palazzos and fountains.
Boudhanath Stupa in 3rd Planet
3rd planet is taking the virtualization concept one step further with plans to digitize global tourism into 100% virtual 3-D models. They’ll also be adding hotspots that will let viewers bring up notes and other tidbits on relevant history, architecture, art, etc.
3rd Planet can become an armchair journey without all the the street grime and the occasional citizen not playing along.
So far they’ve brought religiously significant parts of Katmandu into their cyberscape. On my stroll around Boudhanath Stupa–btw, there’s less ad hoc steering capability than Street View–I learned that its ethereal 36-meter high dome or khumba symbolizes water and the yellow patterns represent lotus leaves.
The ultimate goal behind this startup is to provide a convenient resource for on-the-ground sightseers. You’ll get both an instant big picture of your surroundings along with selected points of interests to zoom into. Skimming through their web site, it appears they have plans to allow users to customize their maps with hotels, shopping, and news, which then would be a potential source of ad revenue.
The 3D rendering can run on a browser with their downloadable plugin–it worked nicely on Firefox- and there’s also a native app available for higher performance. For kicks, I tried 3rd Planet on my iPad, which, along with other tablets, would be the logical platform.
No luck yet– the Safari plug-in wouldn’t load.
In theory, with a good connection and deeper 3rd Planet content, you could probably get away with one less Rick Steves’ guide in your sojournings.