Season’s greetings Re/Cappers. Since Re/Cap HQ will soon be taking some time off to structured-light scan some lumps of coal and bother neighbors with BIM-themed caroling, this’ll be 2024’s last issue.
And it’s one that gets artistic, literally, as some Scottish researchers and museum enthusiasts are using photogrammetry and XR as deftly as Da Vinci used paintbrushes and cadavers.
The XR platform has distinguished qualities and features. But it is homage of sorts, a natural next step from the many institutions who have provided us 3D, if not XR, representations of some of the most coveted works a human has created.
Just meager makings such as:
Heck, there’s even a Girl with a Pearl Earring…BLINKING!
Finally, heck, let’s end with a moonshot - the Apollo 11 Command Module:
What’s Cappenin’ This Week: Photogrammetry-to-XR gives an all-access pass to art museums, a capture company does Oscar-caliber jobs, BIM drives Notre-Dame’s reopening, the world gets its first 5G 360° camera, and an AEC Error of the Week featuring Kentucky Straight (Down) Bourbon Whiskey
Mini ‘Cappenins: Women as the construction labor shortage solution, drones monitor salmon, Hexagon makes an acquisition, five characteristics of forward-thinking microbiology labs, Chat GPT’s OpenAI’s Sam Altman gets interviewed, and Google and Samsung team up for XR
Last week: Drones heat up Arctic research, ancient Greek and Egyptian education get rethought thanks to photogrammetry, a notoriously packed Madrid road tees up BIM and GIS integration, generative design software choices overwhelm, and an AEC Error of the Week in the city that never sleeps…but does drop ice from 80 stories up
As society continues its efforts to break glass ceilings, researchers from the University of Glasgow are doing a whole other kind of shattering - vitrines.
Imagine being able to stroll through a museum without a bunch of chatterboxes all around you! Image credit Arilyn
Thanks to £5.6m of funding from the UK government’s innovation agency, they’re developing ‘Museums in the Metaverse.’ This photogrammetry-based XR platform will enable users to view and curate hundreds of mesmerizing pieces from participating collections.
Ahead of the April 2025 public launch, The Art Newspaper took a virtual tour, donning a Meta Quest 3 headset and wielding two controllers. Stare contemplatively at their account of visual fidelity, user-driven narrative, the tedious 3D modeling, intellectual property, the platform’s goals, and a whole canvas of other tidbits, below.
Of course Clear Angle Studios loves living in a Barbie world.
They helped create it.
Despite only launching in 2013, the London-based, globally-demanded digital capture savants have a filmography that can only be described as blockbuster (adjective, not business). Game of Thrones,Gladiator II, Alien: Romulus, Barbie, Chernobyl, Civil War, and the Dune films, among others, have all benefited from Clear Angle’s suite of offerings.
The “Dorothy” rig. Toto, we’re really, really, REALLY not in Kansas anymore. Image credit 3DVF
But they’ve barely gotten their popcorn for a whole other industry that’s beseeching their talents; gaming. It’s just one of many glimpses into the company that Dominic Ridley, Founder and Director, offers to 3DVF in an expansive interview. Get swept away on specific services and techniques, stories from set, prop photogrammetry, software, partnerships, radiance fields, Demi Moore, and moore!
There aren’t that many famous fires.
Library of Alexandria. Medieval London. Rome, while Nero played the banjo or something.
But April 15, 2019 surely presented one of them, when Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral suffered a devastating structural fire that destroyed most of the roof and significant portions of upper walls. But almost six years later, the ‘Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris’ has reopened, a feat not possible in its window of time without laser scanning & BIM technologies.
Revit-ing history. Image credit The Public Establishment “Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris” and Art Graphique & Patrimoine
Of the 250 companies that participated in the rebuild, one was Autodesk, fortuitously able to produce a BIM model thanks to pre-fire laser scans.
Seeing as December 8th was its re-opening, it’s truly a stop-and-smell-the-roses time, and Engineering.com penned just the piece. Frequently citing Autodesk’s VP of AEC industry strategy Nicolas Mangon, the tale takes us from 12th-century construction and the model’s creation, to four ways it found utility and what the future holds.
An iconic story for an iconic structure, this is one case study every reality capture enthusiast needs for cocktail party talk.
5G is short for the “fifth generation of mobile communications.” So who better to bring it to the 360° realm than a generational telecom titan!
Mmhmm. Continuing to come along swimmingly since debuting a 22-pound phone in 1982 meant for cars and Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Nokia has just unveiled an industrial-targeted 5G 360° camera.
Broad keystrokes include 8K streaming of low-latency, high-resolution 360° video coupled with spatial audio, the Nokia Real-time eXtended Reality Multimedia (RXRM) software solution, an ability to handle extreme temperatures better than a tardigrade with an ice pack, and Europe’s deepest mine already putting it to use.
Press play on Nokia’s press release below.
Warehouse 30 at Barton 1792 Distillery. CWI, Collapsing While Intoxicated. Image credit Louisville Courier Journal
In the heart of bourbon country, Bardstown, Kentucky, June 22, 2018, became a day that would live in whiskey infamy. Warehouse 30 at Barton 1792 Distillery decided it was past last call, and collapsed faster than a lightweight at a frat party.
This wasn't just any old spill - we're talking about 9,000 barrels of bourbon suddenly making a break for freedom. And don’t lose sleep - no tasters were hurt in the making of this film.
Each drum, weighing a hefty 500 pounds and holding 53 gallons of liquid gold, created a "mountain of bourbon barrels" that would make a great set piece for American Gladiators - Sloshed Style. But the party wasn't over yet.
On July 4th, because nothing says "Independence Day" like more bourbon liberation, the remaining half of the warehouse joined the festivities. It was less "rockets' red glare" and more "bourbon's brown tsunami."
As for the structural culprit, it’s actually an unsolved mystery. There were reports that the distillery had been "having issues with one wall of the warehouse, and had been working on it" prior to the collapse. This information was not officially confirmed by parent company Sazerac.
The aftermath? A booze-soaked disaster that infiltrated Withrow Creek. Sazerac faced a potential $25,000 daily fine for tardiness in reporting and turning the local waterways into nature's largest Old Fashioned.
Imagine if we'd unleashed the power of reality capture on this BAC-gone-WTF. 3D models spawned from photogrammetry or laser scans could have potentially highlighted stress points with more precision than a sommelier's nose.
And sure some casks resided in tough-to reach places! Tough to reach places, however, are must-see places for UAVs.
And with a comprehensive Building Information Model (BIM) integrating all this data, warehouse managers could have had a real-time digital twin of their structure, predicting collapses or wobbly walls before the bourbon decided to go crowd surfing.
Remember, folks: when it comes to storing bourbon, it's best to keep it in the barrel, not create impromptu rivers. Cheers to not pouring some out for your homies.
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