question about text and images

[anon_6949584]

Hi there.

This question will take some setting up, but I’m hoping some experienced user can read this and let me know what they think.

I realize that Unity is primarily a game development tool, but I am considering it for a historical/cultural project. I’m considering it because of the in-browser functionality, as there is really no good way to deploy 3D inside a Web browser.

I have done a project in the past which linked a GIS-accurate map of a city neighborhood to relevant cultural and archival data from a museum database. This is a museum installation, and it uses some other proprietary 3D technology from another company, connected to a Flash movie that runs inside a Web browser.

I am now researching technologies for a similar project, except this time we want to deploy it in a browser, or else as a downloadable application (or both).

The user experience we are looking to create will be to have a world people can navigate with the mouse. The buldings in the world will essentially be hotspots that, when clicked, initiate a database search of related data, and perhaps bring the result list up in a translucent overlay. Then, clicking the individual items would show the detailed textual and/or graphical information in the item.

So, my questions are:

Do people think it’s possible to import a map from a more hardcore GIS aplication into a Unity world?

Do people think Unity could be suitable platform for displaying textual information? Graphical information such as JPEGs? Multimedia assets like audio and video files? (I am assuming the latter could not be streamed into a Unity app from outside, so we would have to rely on an external player?)

Can Unity do stuff like SQL database connections over a network, or else getting data from XML feeds, etc.?

Thanks much for any opinions/insights you may have.

[Joachim_Ante_1]

Welcome. You found the right place.

Do people think it’s possible to import a map from a more hardcore GIS aplication into a Unity world?

I would think there are exporters from GIS to fbx, dxf or .obj available somewhere, if you find such a converter it should be pretty easy to get it into Unity.

Unity also has a scriptable mesh interface with which you can easily build your own meshes at runtime. So if you can write a parser for the gis data you can even stream it.

Do people think Unity could be suitable platform for displaying textual information?

We actually have several customers doing similar city visualization projects. While Unity is targeted as a game development tool, it is very well suited for any kind of 3D visualization

It is being used for all kinds of visualizations, starting with architechtural, city visualization, and a lot of product visualizations.

For example this:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3838&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Graphical information such as JPEGs?

Jpgs can be streamed with the WWW class.
http://unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/WWW-texture.html

Multimedia assets like audio and video files? (I am assuming the latter could not be streamed into a Unity app from outside, so we would have to rely on an external player?)

Exactly. You can use the external scripting interface to communicate with eg. flash or a quicktime plugin.

Can Unity do stuff like SQL database connections over a network, or else getting data from XML feeds, etc.?

Unity can do both.

[Jesper_Johansen]

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The user experience we are looking to create will be to have a world people can navigate with the mouse. The buldings in the world will essentially be hotspots that, when clicked, initiate a database search of related data, and perhaps bring the result list up in a translucent overlay. Then, clicking the individual items would show the detailed textual and/or graphical information in the item.

Man, this sounds EXACTLY what I’m doing… question is: How? How would you insert text from a database into a translucent layer ALONG with images and/or video?

[EricKramp]

bump, I’d also love hear ideas about how to stream text in from a database, like entity asked