3D Map of Shanghai

April 1, 2008 2:33 AM

3D map of Shanghai. Double Click a building and get a pic of the building My Chinese isn't up to it but if you double click a building you seem to get a pic of the building and nearby flats for rent. The links on the lower left seem to take you the nearest McDonalds, Hospital, and KFC. You start in the new area of Pudong, go west of the river (direction left) to find the older sites. The cranes on building sites is a nice touch. If you want to see Shanghai from ground level try here: City8
posted by priorpark17 (13 comments total)

take you the nearest McDonalds, Hospital, and KFC

Hmmm.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:33 AM on April 1, 2008

It's not just Shanghai... They have most of Hong Kong mapped, Xi'an, and Beijing. Click on the first blue link on the menu bar at the top for a list of the cities mapped. The cities are named in Chinese, but you can look up the characters in Wikipedia.

Is this better? I have trouble finding roads in dense areas like Hong Kong Island. Finding Tian'anmen Square was cool, though. It would have been just as much work to make the buildings 3D models. If that were so, there would be a lot of applications for this when tethered with a mobile device.

It looks like those links don't work... you have to navigate from the main site. Ai-yaaa.

(Hong Kong -> 香港, Beijing -> 北京, Xi'an -> 西安, Shenzhen -> 深圳)
posted by sleslie at 4:24 AM on April 1, 2008 [2 favorites]

The original site doesn't seem to render in Safari. Pity. Surprisingly, the second site (City8) does, despite saying it requires IE.
posted by outlier at 4:27 AM on April 1, 2008

The moron that is me says that despite having been to Shanghai I'd rather use a map. Get a free one at the Friendship Store. It loads a lot quicker than this.
posted by Wolof at 4:35 AM on April 1, 2008

Residents demand more POLICE STATIONS. Residents demand more FIRE STATIONS. Residents need places to work -- build more INDUSTRY. Commutes are too long -- build a SUBWAY.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:45 AM on April 1, 2008 [7 favorites]

Nice to see the area along the Bund (west bank of the river) is still full of old, low buildings. Wonder how long that will last.
posted by languagehat at 5:21 AM on April 1, 2008

Also Chonqing and a bunch of others. (Links at the top of the Beijing page.)
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:29 AM on April 1, 2008

Wonder how long that will last.

My Chinese friend just saw the page display over my shoulder and said, "hey, that's Pu Dong, that's for westerners. Go to the other side of the river. Chinese would rather die in the basement of the old buildings than step onto that side. Shanghai people with culture pride themselves on only being in the old side."

So maybe it will last a bit.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:32 AM on April 1, 2008

My mind is being seriously boggled by the detail on this. They even have the area where I lived for a short while, way, way outside of down town. I would half expect the buildings to be made more generic to minimize on work, but they're not.

It's so strange to get an overall impression of the multitude of buildings that were under construction while I was there, years later.
posted by beegull at 7:15 AM on April 1, 2008

I'm not really sure how this is 3d?
posted by localhuman at 7:53 AM on April 1, 2008

> I'm not really sure how this is 3d?

The fact that nearer, taller objects occlude shorter, further-away objects makes it 3D.
posted by sdodd at 8:38 AM on April 1, 2008

localhuman, there's some readable coverage of orthographic projections in 3D graphics in this Inside Scoop article from the SimCity site. This 3D map of Shanghai appears to my eye to be orthographic; if somebody knows better, please do correct me.
posted by sdodd at 8:49 AM on April 1, 2008

I'm impressed too! It found '交通大学子弟小学'.
posted by of strange foe at 10:58 AM on April 8, 2008