A standard for 3D virtual cities?

A piece of news of interest to urban modelling researchers which CG Architect has reported; the Open Geospatial Consortium and Special Interest Group 3D (SIG 3D) have now signed an agreement of cooperation in standards for the visualization and exchange of 3D geospatial content. The focus of the exchange of this content is of course via web-based technologies.

This is an important agreement as SIG 3D memebers defined the first version of CityGML (which I have posted about in the past), essentially an open data model framework/encoding standard for 3D virtual cities. This agreement moves closer to something that many researchers (but also developers) have been debating for for years, i.e. a more accepted/official/standardized format in this field. This will be boosted by the Open Geospatial Consortium's authority and credentials as it consists of currently over 410 government agencies, research institutions, industry partners and Universities.

More information about CityGML and the Open Geospatial Consortium can be found here and here.