ARRIGO SILVA

 PART 1 - ENVIRONMENT   <== Click Here To Read PART 1! 
1. Introduction
2. The most common Scenarios representing the Earth
3. My early observations on the Scenarios

 PART 2 - A VISUAL CONFRONTATION   <== Click Here To Read PART 2! 
4. Man VS Machine: A Visual Comparison between Scenarios X,Y
5. The Visual Characteristics of the Scenarios X,Y
5.1 The Visual Impression Summary Table
5.2 Comparing the Scenarios X,Y according to the Visual Impressions

 PART 3 - CEZANNE'S LESSON   <== Current Post 
6. Factors influencing the evaluation of the Scenarios
7. "CEZANNE'S LESSON" that is "New ways to representing the world"
7.1 Cezanne as the Great Innovator of European Modern Art
7.2 Google as the Great Innovator of the World Scenarios

 PART 4 - WHAT FUTURE... ?   <== work in process  
More about 3D representation / Pros and Cons for the USERS and SUPPLIERS / What future for the current 3D Warehouse modelers? / Conclusions

an inspiring performance by Christos

THE ANGLE OF THE ART: PAUL CEZANNE

But in the first half of the nineteenth century, the peaceful life of the academic painters was unsettled by a new amazing invention, Photography, that constituted a tremendous step forward in the realistic representation of the world (since 1838 Daguerre could take pictures like the one shown to the left!).
The art, or rather the science of photography in a few decades made such rapid progress that the "academic" painters saw jeopardized their reputation from a vulgar "machine" and from a few chemical processes! For more, photographic technique continued to improve, and met the favor of the public... In order not to "lose their job" (sorry for the trivialization... ;) the painters had to create something that the camera could not produce - this was perhaps one of the reasons that led some more sensitive painters to invent a new way of painting, putting on canvas what the cameras and photographers could not...

[I want to state clearly here that the any facts, opinions and assessments expressed in this paragraph are quite strictly personal.]

With the Google Scenario X ends the world
of well-finished and well-defined models.

Scenario X aspires to represent the Earth
"as it is [appears] at a given time [instant]"
taking a huge mega-3D-shot, where everything is recorded: monuments, houses, churches, mosquees, roads, bridges, trees, works in progress, cars, trains...

The important is not to "represent something in detail":
the important is to "represent everything in its place".

The strange idea of combining Cezanne and Google came to me while I was carefully examining the Google Earth Scenarios X (with auto-generated models) in the experimental areas of Rome, New York and Tokyo (April 2013). To be honest, at the beginning I felt a bit of annoyance at seeing those outlandish landscapes... but then I got used to them, and indeed I saw something artistic which reminded me, as a passionate of ancient and modern painting, something familiar... similar to... the style of Cezanne!
Upon closer inspection of this... odd couple, beyond the obvious differences (Cezanne was a great painter of the past, while Google is a large and powerful company of our days, etc.) I found some interesting similarities especially in the courage to introduce a new paradigm, to break with previous established traditions and especially to give up a world made of objects clear and distinct.

And finally, perhaps for a strange combination, the "graphical results" of their "experiments" look almost similar, although I must say that the style of Cezanne, from the artistic point of view, seems to me perfect, while that of Google Earth, from the user point of view, seems still too uncertain...

Don Quijote y Sancho Panza
sobre Clavileño
España, 1966

 PART 1 - ENVIRONMENT   <== Click Here To Read PART 1! 
1. Introduction
2. The most common Scenarios representing the Earth
3. My early observations on the Scenarios

 PART 2 - A VISUAL CONFRONTATION   <== Current Post 
4. Man VS Machine: A Visual Comparison between Scenarios X,Y
5. The Visual Characteristics of the Scenarios X,Y
5.1 The Visual Impression Summary Table
5.2 Comparing the Scenarios X,Y according to the Visual Impressions

 PART 3 - WHAT FUTURE... ?   <== work in process 
More about 3D representation / Factors which influence the evaluation of the Scenarios / Pros and Cons for the USERS and SUPPLIERS / What future for the current 3D Warehouse modelers? / Conclusions

Warning 1
The pictures are been chosen to include: structured artifacts as artistic buildings, historical buildings, residential buildings; civil works such as roads, bridges, embankments, walls, sports fileds and natural features such as rivers, meadows, trees etc.
I think that the pictures choosen would cover almost all of the typical situations.

Warning 2
The comments on the pictures are made trying to watch them through the eyes of an ordinary person ("the man in the street"), without considering possible specializations as "the business man", "the tourist", "the art lover", "the urban planner", etc. and even less "the 3D modeler!"
Even with this simplification, I think that the comments can be equally significant.

Warning 3
It is important to emphasize that the image size has a great influence in the proceedings and in comparison of pairs of images, especially as regards the appreciation and evaluation of the degree of detail.
My evaluations were made just on the pictures presented below of 660x474 pixels using the screen of my Personal Computer on which each picture has a size of about 16,5x12,0 cm - and seeing the pictures from about 50 cm.
So if you're reading this article on a different device (phone, tablet, etc..) your feelings and considerations could 'legitimately' be discordant from mine...

Warning
In this section we have proposed to make a comparison between the scenarios limited to their visual characteristics.
For a more comprehensive comparison between the scenarios the reader is referred to Part 3 of this article.

From the examination of the values ​​in the columns of Table 2 we will immediately notice that the Scenario X has always, for all the pictures, the maximum score for Color Impression because all the picture appear very natural in tones and colors, and with shadows coherent and pronounced that give the image a great realism.

For the First Impressions and Accuracy impressions, instead, the situation is more varied. In practice we may find that the score is high when objects are viewed from a distance while it decreases gradually as we approach to them.

In particular, the score tends to zero when the size of the visual field is of the order of TEN METERS (or less) AND the surface of the object is NOT FLAT - moreover it gets worse the more the real objects are articulated in the spatial dimensions.

From the examination of the values ​​in the columns of Table 2 we will immediately notice that the Scenario Y has always, for all the pictures, scores more homogeneous than Scenario X.

Almost all of the lower scores are due to deformation in the terrain of Google Earth.

In some pictures we can note some annoying steps in the terrain (see, for example, the Picture Y4): this fact decreases the realism of the view.

Finally, we can note that the pictures of Scenario Y appear in some cases less natural than Scenario X because they have a lower consistency in tone, colors and shadows.

From what we have seen so far, the Scenario Y would look the best!
But it's too early to tell - for two reasons.

The first is that we still have to consider many other factors
beyond the simple visual impression of the common man.

The second is that the Scenario X is still in the experimental stage,
and therefore could be subject to significant improvements.

These and other topics will be developed in the forthcoming Part 3

Don Quixote and Sancho fly mounted on Clavileño
(1938-Paris-Secretaire-04-019)