3D models of Coventry

Ditto'ed absolutely

Thanks everyone for the messages! Much appreciated!

I spotted this short animation on Peter Knight's facebook page, giving some idea of the potential for developing his 3D model of the city. Unfortunately only viewable if you have a facebook account.

Hi all. Just saw the 'Coventry Rebuilt' Facebook page has announced that the Coventry Rebuilt App has now been released for android on Google Play (here). There is also a YouTube video of the app. I haven't installed the app yet but it looks very good - well done & thanks to Peter (Knight) for all the hard work that must have gone into modelling Coventry's past I'm sure many on this forum will use the app.

I installed the app and eventually correctly answered the questions to skip through the various time periods. The model currently covers three different viewpoints in Broadgate. The year 1939 has a particular surprise feature.

I've just noticed that Peter's Coventry Rebuilt site now has a video exploring St. Mary's Cathedral. An impressive reconstruction but by necessity involving some considerable artistic license. It cleverly explains where the building fits in relation to Trinity Street today.

mcsporran, Once again I find Coventry rebuilt a poor representation of what it once was or am I reading it wrong? Is it tomorrow's world, for it only just vaguely resembles what I once knew, as photo's on here show.

Poor representation / vivid imagination, by the look of it

May not be 100% accurate but I love his work!

I think it is excellent to give a feeling of something we cannot be sure about nonetheless.

Rob, Yes probably are amazing, but I'm not jumping on a modern bandwagon. When was the old city so uniform, so level, so neat, and that was what the old city was about, in and out, up and down, nooks and crannies, twists and turns - you wouldn't believe. How many people on tele have tried to portray the fifties, and past times, and got a lot wrong, but the audience don't know and swallow it all hook, line and sinker. Believe me, how many on here complain of the council pulling down buildings, but don't bother to find out what the instructions they have from the government or what they can build. No, this Pete may be very clever, but he didn't know Coventry or its people before the war.

I don't understand the "excitement" about something which "gives a feeling of something we cannot be sure about"

There's a lot of hard work involved just to match what is currently known about the ruins. Each new publication has a slightly different interpretation. Stage one is the research, stage 2 is to make the shapes and stage 3 is to colour them in. The problem with stage 3 is that it uses a lot of processing. The more textures, the more detail, the slower everything gets. The mist isn't a style thing (ok, it is a bit) but to prevent the viewer seeing lots in the distance, all of which needs to be calculated. Pete is trying to create something that will run on a phone so that a visitor could spin around and see what was where. Just building the geography is a cow. Pete has got a lot more building done than I have but my research is probably further on. Putting irregularity into 3D reconstructions so it looks authentic is actually very hard. I've spent ages working out how to colour mine in. I decided early on that St Mary's was a very difficult build because we only have bits of information. I'm going to do it as a ruin.... if I get that far. I'll add that modelling is harder than it looks and it looks very hard indeed

Helen, Yes that may be so, but I would have thought you would have liked as near to the true history as possible but this is someone's imagination, not even like Coventry. Your friend on #480, cinema topic, said Charles Dickens (born 1812) read stories from a cinema stage and in the 1920s you could phone in and hear them. How the hell did he record them, who had phones in the 1920s? - the whole lot's sheer bunkum.

Helen, Charles Dickens came to Coventry, maybe at the request of Charles Bray, ribbon manufacturer. He read from the stage of the Corn Exchange, and he was invited back. Also a friend of George Eliot - as for the rest...