Posted on February 4th, 2025

Remotely Spatial: How Old Is “Old School” 3D?

3D is often part of a WOW moment whether you’re looking at data skyscrapers populating the globe or flying through a digital twin of your favorite city. GIS and 3D, once a couple of cool kids in the same class, are now grownup business partners changing how we visualize data. It was and remains… impressive!

If you introduce aerial photography to someone, the first place they want to see is home. Many years ago, I was teaching a group of teachers about geospatial technologies that were ready to integrate into their classrooms. I led them through a variety of tools, one of which was a very new Google Earth (long before Facetime), freshly renamed from Keyhole. When opening the software for the first time, many teachers were dazzled like a kid on Christmas morning. One teacher replied, “It looks so real…like we’re really flying!” She then proceeded to find “home,” her beloved grandmother’s house. The next encounter with the map I had not seen before, or frankly since. She got as close as she could to the screen and began waving and shouting, “Hey Grandma! Can you see me!?! Here I am!” Now, in 2025, this feels unbelievable. You’re probably laughing. I assure you that it’s a true story. So how much of what we “see” online and in data is REAL?

By the title, you might have been expecting some reminder of planes taking photos or the aforementioned Keyhole that became Google Earth. Or, perhaps you were thinking of something out of Pixar studios. You’d be incorrect on both counts. Archeologists have proof that the world’s oldest 3D map, carved into stone, is in France dating to 13,000 years ago. Anthony Milnes, a study co-author and a geologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said in a statement, “What we’ve described is not a map as we understand it today – with distances, directions, and travel times – but rather a three-dimensional miniature depicting the functioning of a landscape, with runoff from highlands into streams and rivers, the convergence of valleys, and the downstream formation of lakes and swamps.” Our need to map and inform others of natural phenomena has existed for a very long time.

This discovery made me think about the experience of touching the map to make it more realistic. Perhaps the scale helps our brain appreciate how tall or how far. In a computer-driven world, that experience can get lost. One way to experiment with 3D, scale, and our impact on environments is the Augmented Reality Sandbox. Playing in the sandbox isn’t just for kids. This representation can allow even professionals to plan and test the impact of moving and changing natural topography. We can all appreciate the need to understand our environment deeply to avoid or manage natural disasters.

Looking for new resources? If you would like to experiment with a computer map, check out the National Library of Scotland’s Georeferenced 3D Maps Viewer. You can fly around Scotland and test quickly the impact of exaggeration on the map.

I wonder. What would Lewis and Clark have to say about these things? As their explorations took them by the Cahokia Mounds? What might they have imagined about the ancient culture that moved earth to create a system of mounds, always near a water source? Were they planning for floods, or just liked standing on higher ground? Even our landscapes tell stories.

As you go about your GIS work, integrating stunning imagery and configuring the perfect 3D environments, think about the story that will linger as our world changes. The paleolithic people left us map stories and so much more. What stories will you create this year?

If you need me, I’ll be planning a “3D masterpiece” for the backyard, also known as my garden.

Barbaree Duke
Geospatial Crusader

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