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Simulating Mount Rushmore

Posted by: Tim Halbur

7 November 2009 - 7:00am

Experts from heritage group Historic Scotland have developed a technique using lasers to create precise digital representations of enormous sites. Mount Rushmore is the next location to be captured.

Once captured, the team can simulate how the site looked in the past, or project forward.

"They can simulate the effects of climate change, urban encroachment or other natural or man-made disasters on those same sites, peering into the future.

Given a proposal for a new building in a city like Edinburgh, they can also create virtual realities, almost microscopically accurate, so viewers might see what the building looks like from all angles in the place where it’s intended to go, including the shadows it might cast at different times of day."

Full Story: Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks
Source: The New York Times, November 6, 2009
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.
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