Ping won Best Content at the Web3D roundup at this year's SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego. SIGGRAPH is the world's premier event for computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Chris Thorne and Viveka Weiley from Ping (great name!) won for best content with a cool demo of their 3map - The Planet Earth Project. 3map is a Free Software project to build an open platform for geospatial applications over broadband networks.

[3dgraphics.about.com article]

OGC User article

The staff at Ping Interactive Broadband in Australia is tackling a problem as big as the earth. For some time the team has dreamed of a 3D interactive, Web-based world map. The application, they hope, will include a hypermedia viewer that renders geographic information in high-definition real time 3D over broadband networks. Another key idea: the platform will allow users to publish data into the system. With a grant from Telstra Broadband Fund, the project, called 3D Metanet Atlas Platform (3map), is moving right along.

Sydney Morning Herald/Melbourne Age article

It started as a 3D enthusiast's dream - a detailed online model of Earth. Now Telstra is funding development of the virtual planet in the hope that broadband users will populate its countries, build cities and travel through time to key places in history.

A plan to re-create the planet using gigabytes of geospatial data won $250,000 in the latest round of grants from the Telstra Broadband Fund. Australian developer Ping Interactive is using the grant and the online modelling language VRML to build something that is more than just a representation of the world. It will become home to a unique online community.

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From the Sydney Morning Herald:

GIS looks set to become more accessible, writes Nicole Manktelow.

An ambitious project to map the entire world on a 3-D Web site will ultimately let users add details and even models of their own homes and other landmarks, while using little more than freely available software.

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