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Dec 4, 2008 11:00 pm US/Eastern
Take A Virtual Tour Of Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
Imagine shopping, meeting your friends, or taking a walk through Center City without leaving your house. It's now possible in Virtual Philadelphia!
Technology reporter Stephanie Abrams shows us the groundbreaking new technology that's about to revolutionize how people get to know the City of Brotherly Love.
Tourists flock to Philadelphia to see history up close, and now our treasures are just a keystroke away in Virtual Philadelphia. It's the first three dimensional interactive city ever built.
The creator is the CEO of the company GeoSim Cities. Victor Shenkar learned how to build virtual worlds as a member of the Israeli Air Force. He's brought his know how from Tel Aviv to JFK Boulevard creating a program that highlights everything the city of brotherly love has to offer.
"A lot of tourism and history, beautiful architecture, I thought this was the perfect choice," said Shenkar.
The program is now available to download from The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau website to promote economic growth.
Victor says he predicts a big future for virtual worlds that offer benefits for tourism, real estate, shopping, and more! In Virtual Philadelphia, you can go shopping just by clicking on a building and getting directed to their online Web site.
If a business buys advertisement, their office can become virtualized. That gives you an inside look of the property for rent, how a particular business looks, or a restaurant you might want to try out.
The avatars in Virtual Philadelphia will soon represent people at their computers. They'll even allow for social networking. Just click on the avatar to meet him or her. You can chat via instant message, or by using your computers web camera.
Look hard enough and you might even find our CBS 3 live truck and Stephanie's reporter Avatar.
She describes what it's like to fly in Virtual Philadelphia. You can try it too. Just click on the little bird icon and away you go. Press the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the city.
We stopped by internet café The Last Drop located on Pine Street in Center City to show the program to a few people. They were impressed, excited about seeing the city designed to scale, and about the ability to navigate through it any way they chose. They loved the flying feature, and one person said it would be a lot easier than using a map to find his way around.
This new program makes Philadelphia the most accessible city on the web.
Victor Shenkar says he's already addressed safety concerns with the city.
Virtual Philadelphia is expected to be updated within a month to include the more interactive features like live avatars, and once it's up and running GeosimPhilly would profit from businesses buying advertising.
In this virtual world, everything is designed to scale, allowing you to measure the distance between any two points. It could be a useful tool for the city in case of an emergency, or for architects!
Also, you'll see buildings that are planned but haven't been built yet. Virtual Philadelphia only needs the blueprint to make our future a reality online.
RELATED LINKS:
http://www.geosimphilly.com/
http://www.philadelphiausa.travel/virtual-philadelphia
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