Posthuman Blues

The speedy way to capture a city

"'Right now, a detailed urban model can take many months to create,' says Bruce Deal, vice-president of the Virginia engineering firm SET Associates, which is helping to adapt the technology for the US military. 'With the new model, we're talking about an hour or so.' Virtualised reality scans the urban landscape using lasers and digital cameras mounted on a truck or plane. A laser measures distances to objects such as lamp posts and building facades, while the digital camera takes 2D photos."