Masons opt for Spheron technology at Olympics
One year on from the London Olympic Games and SpheronVR is today finally pleased to reveal how its customer, Mason Land Surveys Ltd opted for Spheron technology for the task of digitally recording all buildings and structures in the new Olympic Park in East London. The Olympic Games are one of the biggest and most complex events in the world.
Mason is a leading Survey & Technical Geospatial service company which operates from 4 office locations across the UK. At the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games Mason was the official supplier of precision Survey, Mapping and Imaging services throughout the whole mammoth construction process. Being on site for more than six years, from the start during the land acquisition stages with initial site surveys through to the games itself - working with Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) & (LOCOG)
On the year of the Olympics, nearing the end of the construction phase, (prior to the operational hand-over of new buildings) Mason was commissioned to record & document the entire Olympic Park. This included buildings, structures, site areas and even individual rooms throughout the site. The Park held some 9 major sport venues and the Athletes’ Village, with a total area size of 2.5sq Km (equivalent to 357 football pitches.)
Mason Managing Director, Mr Kevan Mason explains ‘Having been involved onsite as the survey company – this was by far one of the most exciting and challenging requests, being asked to digitally document the entire site.’ Mason has a full range of equipment available to their surveying teams, from more traditional based surveying equipment through to the latest high-tech Laser scanning technology. After initial research Mason opted for an imagery based Photographic approach – a solution which could create an immersive visual environment, allowing their client to re-visit a site in a virtual context. Which due to the size and scale of the project they hoped could still remain user friendly and responsive to whoever would interact with the captured data; a system which could also support multi-discipline geographic data.
‘This was to be a site plan and an onsite Visual Asset record of everything that had been recently constructed. Used for site hand-over condition survey documentation as well as other forms of restricted site access records for a number of Olympic authorities’– Additionally 3d measurements were also to be extracted from the data, as well as an ability to organise and add other relevant detail photos and documentation to such project data.
‘The Spheron Camera was a most reliable unit capturing the highest quality data every time from each scan point – operating perfectly no matter what lighting environment it encountered – also the efficient post process to construct such data sets into a presentation form (which included an interactive Virtual 3D Site Tour) the speed of the production allowed us to deliver the data on-time and with excellent results. All in all we captured over 12,500 Spheron scan locations – At times the digital project data sizes were enormous and exceeded many Terabytes, therefore seeing the system remain stable throughout and still retain controllable / real-time playback was of great proof of the whole systems dependability.’ said Mr Mason.
As well as Spheron Cameras, Mason also invested in Spheron’s SceneCenter Server solution – a database system which is able to handle such large data sets whilst retaining the function to publish interactive SceneCase reports as well as remain a live active Client / Server based visual asset management system.
SpheronVR founder & CEO Mr Gerhard Bonnet said ‘We feel proud and honoured that our technology was used at the site of such a high profile event as an Olympic Games. Recording Asset & Venue data on a scale this large is never an easy task and we congratulate all the Mason teams for their excellent work.’
Mason remains committed to the Olympics and still to this day continues to support the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) with onsite consultancy and services in and around the unique Park.
Spheron SceneCenter Interface
See it live at SPAR EUROPE – For the first time publicly, Mason’s are to explain the whole process and reveal samples of the Olympic project at the latest 3D Imaging technology conference – Spar Europe held in Amsterdam.
About SPHERON-VR
SPHERON-VR AG is one of the most innovative companies in the area of visual information technologies. Core products of the German headquartered company are digital HDRi camera systems for full spherical photography as well as workflow-integrated image processing and database applications. Designed to fit the needs and requirements of many industry sectors, the companies major markets are Photorealistic Visualization & Computer Graphics (CGI) and database driven Visual Asset Management solutions in the areas of crime scene investigation, security, fire and tactical training. Comprehensive service offerings complete the professional portfolio. SPHERON-VR is based in Germany & the UK, where it delivers its technologies and solutions. Strategic partnerships and sales channels allow SPHERON-VR to offer their unique portfolio to a worldwide market.
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