one story houses at the time. Moreover, the mountains
surrounding Kyoto and Kanko-boko float of Gion Festival were
placed on Shijo Street.
The views from arbitrary viewpoints that UrbanViewer
provides show that Yamahoko looks a very big object in 1910's
and in 19" century though they look smaller at present
surrounded by high buildings. And the range of mountains
people can see was much greater in old times (Figure 15).
19" century
Figure 15. Laser scanning of Yamahoko miniature (upper left)
and Landscape changes of Gion Festival through time
Next, let us take a look at the decrease of machiyas using
"Virtual Time-Space of Kyoto."
Based on the distribution data of machiyas identified by aerial
photographs in 1948, 1961, 1974 and 1987, machiyas
automatically generated by *Machiya VR Generation Macro"
were located in MAP CUBE of Kyoto. Here the types of
machiya were randomly selected. And those buildings other
than machiya were MAP CUBE data (Figure 16).
Figure 16. Changes in urban landscape of Kyoto
It clearly shows that machiyas facing major streets disappeared
first, then the disappearance gradually expanded inward the
street blocks. And as the result, modern high-rise buildings have
become more and more dominant in urban landscapes.
International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part BS. Istanbul 2004
4. CONCLUSIONS
The research will continue to reconstruct historical city of
Kyoto starting from the present going back to the past while
making a variety of digital contents which constitute the
landscapes at different times.
The reconstruction and visualization of VR city models used to
be considerably in low quality of visualization. Some could deal
with only small area because of the limit for amount of data it
could handle, and others did not have accurate positional data
or adequately detailed 3D models. We could solve the problem
by employing MAP CUBE, which is the most accurate and
detailed 3D-GIS model of Kyoto, as a platform of “Virtual
Time-Space of Kyoto,” and UrbanViewer that made possible to
handle a great amount of 3D city data in real time. We continue
adding VR models based on all available historical information
and documents, and at the final phase of the research we intend
to apply “Virtual Time-Space of Kyoto” to the uses including
assistance for urban landscape planning of Kyoto as well as
sending rich information about Kyoto to the world through the
internet.
References from Literature:
Takase, Y., Sho, N., Sone, A., Shimiya, K., 2003. Automatic
Generation of 3-D City Models and Related Applications,
International Workshop on Visualization and Animation of
Reality-based 3D Models, ISPRS Commission V, WG V/6, CD-
ROM.
Yano, K., Nakaya T., Isoda, Y., Takase, Y., 2003. Virtual
Kyoto: restoring historical urban landscapes using VR
technologies, The 2" NII International Symposium “Digital
Svlkroads,” Nara, Japan, Digital Silk Roads Prize in the
category of poster and demonstrations.
References from websites:
21% Century COE Project of Ritsumeikan University
http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/eng/research/coe/index.shtml
MAP CUBE http://www.mapcube.jp
UrbanViewer http://Www.urbanviewer.com
CAD Center Corporation http://www.cadcenter.co.jp
Section of Cultural Heritage Preservation, City of Kyoto
http://www.city.kyoto.jp/bunshi/bunkazai/index.html
Acknowledgements
Our gratitude goes to Urban Improvement Section, the City of
Kyoto, and Machiya-saisei-kenkyukai, an NPO who allowed us
to use Machiya Surveys results.
This paper is an outcome of 21 Century COE Project (2002-
2006) "Kyoto Arts and Entertainment Innovation Research"
funded by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology.
The initial development of automatic generation software for
MAP CUBE was funded by Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry of Japan in 2000.
All brand names and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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