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Comment by pgreenwood | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know of any good use cases for a 3D models or simulations at the city scale apart from eye candy, e.g. public presentations of future urban development?

I worked in this space for a while and I never found much of a use case for serious applications of 3D over say an ordinary 2D GIS. Ended up building applications using PostGIS openstreetmap etc that were a lot more effective.

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It's very useful in film CGI, for example if you need a background for a flying helicopter/plane/superhero or, if it's detailed enough, need to simulate a building collapsing or even just the shadows of a flying object to then overlay on your real footage. Even if you need to manually model the block you're filming on, it's still a great starting point and can be used for anything far enough or not in focus.

Outside of that, I know people also use it to plan solar panel installations (simulating shadows to optimize roof solar panel placement) and I'm planning to use it for determining how much sunlight and subsequently heat different streets get with the eventual goal of being able to route around the hottest streets when walking in the summer.

Knowing building volumes and surface areas can be really helpful for studying Urban Heat Islands since they give you a more accurate idea of the amount of impervious material/surfaces absorbing and emitting heat.

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