[Geowanking] rendered 3d scene

[Marc Pfister]

> Brian Russo wrote:
> 
> This can actually be worse the nicer the visuals are, because many
> laypeople see a pretty map and assume the data is good when in fact
> there is generally no correlation between data presentation and data
> quality.

This reminds me of something where too much realism became a problem for us.

We were doing some visualization studies for a housing development and they were rejected by the client (a county) because the house models we were using were too stylized and they didn't want the architectural style to influence public opinion ("Not more bleeping Tuscan tile and stucco!"). Having crisply rendered grey boxes looked way too weird, so the compromise was to have an architect/artist hand draw and watercolor(!) over the boxes, so they had a form that seemed very preliminary and indefinite while still showing what the houses would do to the visual character of the area.

Now for a berm on a gun range, you probably won't have that problem....

- Marc