YSU adds 3-D mapping to master plan

YOUNGSTOWN — It started out as a class project for some geography students, but some 18 months and 4,000 hours of work later, Youngstown State University has a full-fledged 3-D campus map.

It’s an interactive virtual map available on YSU’s Web site at www.ysu.edu that allows viewers to “fly” around buildings, examine how campus structures interact with each other and look at a three-dimensional view of entire sections of campus.

Students in a Geographic Information Systems 2 class were required to develop their own GIS project, and one group chose to do a 3-D computer model of campus, said Dr. Bradley Shellito, assistant professor of geography, explaining how the project took shape.

They estimated the size and shapes of campus buildings and superimposed them on an aerial photograph, coming up with “a good representation of what campus kind of looked like,” Shellito said.

The model was interactive so the viewer could fly around campus, he said.

The buildings were just block shapes with no details, however.

Still, it was impressive enough that Dr. Craig S. Campbell, chairman of the Geography Department, told Dr. Thomas Maraffa, special assistant to the president, about the project.

After Maraffa saw it, he told YSU’s president, Dr. David C. Sweet, and Sweet asked if the project could be developed into a full 3-D map that could be used in developing the campus master plan, Shellito said.

For more, see Sunday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com Also, Click here for a gallery of YSU's 3-D maps.