Air Tours & UpToWhere

Here are two cool apps for exploring the world:

1. Air Tours allows you to explore cities by combining Google Maps 3D, Street View and more. For example: here's Boston.
2. UpToWhere is a basic viewshed tool, but creates a great 3D visualization.

The MoAT: The Museum of All Things

This is just cool: The MoAT: The Museum of All Things

From the website: The Museum of All Things (or "The MoAT") is a nearly-infinite virtual museum that you can visit for free on your computer! You can find exhibits on millions of topics, from Arts in the Philippines to Zinc deficiency! The breadth of the museum is made possible by downloading text and images from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Every exhibit in the museum corresponds to a Wikipedia article. The walls of the exhibit are covered in images and text from the article, and hallways lead out to other exhibits based on the article's links.

One caveat: you need to actually download the museum software onto your computer:

• https://mayeclair.itch.io/museum-of-all-things (Windows, Mac, OpenXR, etc.)
• https://github.com/m4ym4y/museum-of-all-things (for the nerds)

The Coastline Paradox

The Coastline Paradox is not really a paradox, but rather a pretty slick visualization of sea level rise overlaid on Google Street View images from around the world. Nothing new here, but a cool visualization. The one problem here is that this 'only' shows normal sea level rise and not what happens when you add high tide, rainfall, and maye a storm surge - that's when the greatest impacts will occur.

Map Channels Tour Maps

From Map Mania: the new Map Channels Tour Maps.

Seems like an easy way to make virtual 3D Street View tour anywhere - well, assuming that Street View data exists.

This Map Does Not Exist!

Or, rather: the world being mapped in this map does not 'exist', other than in the 'imagination' of AI - have a look: This Map Does Not Exist. This is a crowd-sourced attempt to 'guide' AI...the 'meta' version of OSM if you will. Read more about it over on MapsMania.

XR, VR, AR in scientific research

Good article here: Why scientists are delving into the virtual world. But, it is clear tha XR, VR, AR, etc. are not really used (yet) for actual scientific research, but other ancillary functions such as:

• Virtual meetings.
• Training students.
• Educational outreach.
• Controlling your lab machines / robots remotely.

Here's a good quote: "VR offers a repeatable, standardized clinical training method that is not reliant on the quality of the trainer." Or, being able to access an actual simulation lab or medical dummy.

Now all you need is a set of VR goggles & a super-fast Internet connection!

Data Visceralization

Is this the future of good old data viz: Data Visceralization?

Space Station Docking Sim

What an awesome waste of time: ISS Docking Sim

VR Glaciers and Glaciated Landscapes

Okay, I'm impressed: VR Glaciers and Glaciated Landscapes is awesome!

AR, VR, and MR in the classroom

Kathy Schrock has compiled a lot of great resources:

• Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality in the Classroom
• Augmented reality (AR) in the classroom
• Also: Augmented reality for STEM learning: A systematic review (Computers and Education, 2018)

This video is a great example of what will be: Hyper-Reality (it gets really good at the 2-minute mark).

Northwestern University Knight Lab

Northwestern University Knight Lab is a community of designers, developers, students, and educators working on experiments designed to push journalism into new spaces.

There you have it. In-practice this means some great open-source tools for data viz:

• Timeline JS
• Storyline JS
• Scene VR

Street Tours

Seen on Maps Mania: Street Tours is a quick way to combine Google Street View and Maps into an interactive and annotated tour. It's not the most elegant of interfaces, but it is simple, quick, and does what it is supposed to do.

Campus Technology 2017

Here's their annual survey: 2017 Teaching With Technology Survey. Now, these surveys are a bit biased from the start and so its is important to parse the results keeping that in mind. Still, a few things are interesting:

• Faculty and students agree: ed-tech is good for teaching and learning (Page 29). This result is not surprising given the biased source.
• Students do not have/use tablets (Page 29).
• Faculty feel confident in their ed-tech abilities (Page 34). Again, not a surprise result given the biased source.
• Top-10 Technologies that will be dead and gone within 10 years (Page 36), for example clickers, non-interactive projectors, traditional LMS, and computer labs.
• Top-10 Technologies that will become important over the next 10 years (Page 37), for example VR/AR, 3D everything, next-get LMS (?), and the Internet of Things.

Google Blocks

I don't know anything about it, but Google Blocks seems to be the thing to do for the VR/AR 'world' - see more at Google Is Becoming The Adobe Of VR.

ArcGIS 360 VR

Start with City Engine, host it on ArcGIS Online, and immerse yourself with ArcGIS 360 VR.