ESRI's Geoprocessing blog: Lidar and ArcGIS part 4: forest density and height.

This blog post is written by Clayton Crawford, a Product Engineer in the Software Products Group's 3D Team in Redlands.

This is the forth in a series on Lidar Solutions in ArcGIS.

Google and LiDAR

wondering how google earth creates the 3D buildings? LiDAR, of course!

LiDAR and 3″-4″ ortho files of Contra Costa County available!

I went to the Contra Costa Countywide GIS meeting yesterday and found out about these countywide files that were recently posted to the Casil FTP site in the coco-county folder. Infrared imagery is expected to be posted by January 2009. The LiDAR was flown for flood control analysis, but it is publicly available for any other research. The county GIS deptartment asks that you contact them to share how you work with the data. Also, I came across this LiDAR resources site with links to other data and helpful info.

Radiohead uses LiDAR in latest music video

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes. And here's the 'making of' video:

Lidar in Machu Picchu

Cool article...esp. for Tim! in GeoWorld http://www.geoplace.com/uploads/featurearticle/0602da.asp