3D model helps redesign Paris' most famous district

In 2024, Paris will host the Summer Olympics for the third time. The city council wants to redesign the parks and promenades around the city's most famous landmark and has commissioned architects and landscape planners to create what is probably the most detailed digital image of a real urban environment. A playground for VR?

The 3D model covers an area of 2.4 square kilometres, including the Trocadéro gardens to the north-west of the Eiffel Tower and the Field of Mars, which extends to the south-east. The area was digitised using a combination of Lidar scans and aerial photographs, similar to the 3D landscapes of Google Earth.

The 3D model includes 8,200 trees, 1,000 buildings, three bridges, 25 statues and hundreds of street lamps and park benches. In accordance with the city's specifications, the simulation was only allowed to deviate by a few centimetres.

The company commissioned with the digitalisation Autodesk had spent thousands of hours reconstructing the parks and the surrounding urban area and created the most precise digital image of the Parisian neighbourhood to date: a 3D model that occupies 342 gigabytes of memory and is based on a point cloud consisting of more than 10 billion individual points.

Reconstruct an experience

The 3D model serves as a common design starting point for architects and landscape planners and is intended to help the city administration and the public to visualise, bring together and compare designs in various phases. The aim is to create an accurate impression of the final result long before construction begins. In addition to an abstract 3D model, this includes the experience of passers-by walking through the new facilities:

"The architecture of the Eiffel Tower is world-famous, but the visitor experience as a whole is much harder to grasp. Autodesk's 3D model allows this essential aspect to be taken into account and the designs to be optimally assessed," says Jean-François Martins, Deputy Mayor of Paris, who is responsible for tourism in Paris and for the preparations for the Summer Olympics.

A great playground for a number of VR applications. A few weeks ago, we reported that a new VR centre was opening in Paris. VR experience with jetpacks is offered.

Source: Vrodo