43D Newsletter - December 2008 Edition

In this issue                                                                                                    

New Topos R2 Pricing Scheme
No budget surprises and premium support:
Topos Standard License: €800
Service Agreement: €1200 per year
Topos at the Skanderborg Music Festival
43D develop support for overview, collaboration and coordination at the Skanderborg Music Festival.
Visualizing the Planet Randers Dome

43D use Topos to visualize the world’s largest indoor and outdoor zoo attraction.
Urban Planning and Design Demo

Watch the demonstration and tutorial video: "Urban planning and design with Topos R2".
Topos R2 Update 5

Topos R2 Update 5 is now available in the download area for existing users of Topos R2.

If you are receiving this newsletter by mistake or you would like to contact us for any other reason, please feel free to send us an email, or contact us through other channels.

New Topos R2 Pricing Scheme

As part of the new pricing scheme 43D introduces a Service Agreement. Through this agreement you make sure that there are no more budget surprises and worries about future upgrades and add-on configurations. And not only that, the Service Agreement entitles you to Premium Support from the Topos software development team.

With the new scheme the cost of the basic Topos software license and the cost of premium support, upgrades and add-ons is itemized as follows:
  • Topos R2 Standard License - €800: including
    • all updates.
  • Service Agreement - €1200: Yearly subscription including
    • all upgrades (new major revisions, e.g. upcomming Topos R3),
    • premium support,
    • all Add-ons,
    • all updates.
For more details and information about volume discounts see the Topos R2 price list.

Topos at the Skanderborg Music Festival

The @aglance project
Imagine 50.000 music enthusiasts. Gathered at the Skanderborg Festival for 5 happy days under the beech wood. Good music, joyful time and great atmosphere are key issues.

Behind the scenes emergency response personnel work hard to keep it that way.
To them a quick outline of the situation is crucial but how can they achieve the overview at a glance?

This is what the @aGlance project is about.

A step towards making the festival not only the most beautiful but also the most secure festival to the visitors in the future.

43D is partner in the @aGlance project, and has delivered a version of Topos and 3D model that integrates live information from a range of sources:
  • Live video streams positioned in the 3D model where the cameras are physically located.
  • Tracking of emergency response personnel on the site.
  • Insertion of pictures taken by personnel on site of problematic situations positioned in the 3D model where they were taken
  • Dynamic 3D models of the whole festival area, including tents, stalls, stages, special exhibitions, etc.

The integrated system was used by emergency response personnel at 4 different touch screens distributed over the festival area.

Visualizing the Planet Randers Dome

Planet Randers is by all definitions a flagship project at a Danish and northern European level. It is no less than the world’s largest indoor and outdoor zoo attraction.

The Planet Randers dome is literally the Planet Earth drawn together in Randers within a gigantic dome that encompasses all of the planet’s continents in a 63.000 square meter area. Shaped like an unfolded atlas, the experience zones offer the visitors a multitude of high value experiences.

The area outside the Planet Randers World Dome will be transformed into a zoological journey in time. A 15 kilometre belt of the riverbanks of the Gudenå – Denmark’s only river

For 43D, it is a very interesting project in that it involves the modelling of a large area, it includes both rural and urban areas, as well as exciting new constructions.

43D has used Topos to produce a 3D model of an area spanning from Langå in Southwest to the city of Randers in Northwest, including a range of examples of animals in various areas, models of the proposed new construction, models of the existing Randers Regnskov, and integration of terrain and city data from BlomInfo. The model has until now been used for the construction of a presentation video, but the intention is in the longer run to expand the model and use it in future planning and presentation activities.

Go to www.43D.com/planetranders.php to watch the presentation video.
(Aerial Photos, DTM and city model provided by BlomInfo A/S)

Urban Planning and Design Demo

An increasing number of our customers are using Topos R2 for urban planning and design projects. In this connection we have put together a short demonstration and tutorial video revealing how you may easily get started with Topos in urban contexts. Watch the video "Urban planning and design with Topos R2" online by following one of the following links:

Topos R2 Update 5

Update 5 for Topos R2™ is now available in the download area for existing users of Topos R2. Update 5 amongst others includes:
  • Contours: Added possibility to interpolate between color bands.
  • Import / Export: Various bug-fixes.
  • Auto-scroll when dragging objects in Object Browser
  • Fixed crash when setting the document url to an empty string
  • Terrain lightmap is recalculated when terrain modifiers and self-shadowing is turned on/off.
  • Flythroughs: Various bug-fixes.
  • Added ability to toggle overlay titles via View menu.
  • Prevented having both Skybox and Skydome in a workspace.
  • Fixed problems regarding animation speeds (e.g. of turbines) being reset.
  • Terrain modifiers: Underlying format is now always tiff, so should contain less noise.
  • Improved calculation of heading, pitch and roll in Angles dialog and in connection with Google Earth export.
  • Online/offline Help menu entries. Standard Topos installer uses online Help. Separate installer for offline Help.

A free trial version of Topos R2™ Update 5 is available for download from our website. The trial is fully functional including built-in video generation, but time-limited and watermarks the produced visuals.
If you wish to contact us regarding any of the news or other business, or if you do not want to receive this newsletter again, please send us a note to the following address:
contact@43d.com, 43D ApS, IT-Parken, Aabogade 34, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark, phone: +45 23382188



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