ASCII Startup What should we use the Japanese city 3D model "PLATEAU" for?

From Project PLATEAU official website

　The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is promoting the development, utilization, and open data conversion of the "3D city model" as Project PLATEAU, aiming to realize overall optimization, citizen participation, and agile urban development. As part of this, the PLATEAU Hack Challenge 2021, a hackathon utilizing PLATEAU, was held in July (see the report on the day).

　In this article, we will present a dialogue between three judges, Mr. Tomu Kawada, the eldest son of the AR Brothers, Mr. Chomadoko and Madoka Chiyoda, and Mr. Yuya Uchiyama, who is in charge of Project PLATEAU at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Deliver. (Hereafter, titles omitted in the text)

People have been waiting for PLATEAU to come out

――A lot of unique works were gathered at PLATEAU Hack Challenge 2021. Looking back from the standpoint of a judge, what kind of hackathon was it?

Madoka Chiyoda (hereinafter referred to as Chomado): All of your works were wonderful, weren't they? Both the product itself and the presentation. I think it would be easy to compare similar works, but all the works were good, so I was very confused as to what criteria to use for selection.

Tomu Kawada (hereinafter referred to as Kawada): I have many opportunities to be a judge of hackathons, but this time I thought that all the works were of a high level. First of all, I felt that everyone was waiting for 3D data of this kind of city to be provided. Up until now, everyone had been accumulating ideas like, "I want to try it, but I can't because I don't have the data." It was a fun hackathon to judge.

Yuya Uchiyama (hereafter referred to as Uchiyama): Until now, there was no 3D geospatial information of urban space in open data. I thought that I was able to provide a good opportunity for them to play as they like. What I thought a little was that there were many people who had a hard time processing PLATEAU data and loading it into other platforms, so it's an SDK for developers, so it's easier to handle. And I wonder if it can be used more widely. I would like to expand on that as well.

Kawada: That's really important. In order for creators to be able to devote themselves to continuous development and to come out together with the ecosystem. I, the AR Three Brothers, have been doing this for over 10 years, but before that, I've been a creator around the web for a long time. The standard for Adobe Flash is over, isn't it? When I thought about why it ended, it was because there were a lot of creators, but the industry didn't grow. I thought it would be nice to prepare something that can be sold, like an asset in Unity.

Madoka Chiyoda is an IT engineer and manga artist. She is happily working as a Cloud Developer Advocate at a major foreign IT company. He loves Twitter and has over 80,000 followers. Female IT engineer community CodePolaris organizer.

Chomado: It would be nice to have a tutorial. Content that allows people who do not yet know anything about PLATEAU to easily experience success. Like "PLATEAU Hello World". I thought I was also a judge, but I think that PLATEAU can only play with strong people. A little more simple success experience... For example, "PLATEAU worked on my hand. I already understood PLATEAU completely."

Uchiyama: That is also a problem. Actually, it's very easy to run PLATEAU with Cesium(*) reading it. The hurdles are so low that you can do it in about 15 minutes once you get used to it. But I have a real feeling that people think it's something much more difficult to reach than that. We are also discussing whether we should make a tutorial about entertainment, geospatial analysis + α.

　The difficult part is figuring out how to appeal to people who ask "What is XML (*2)?" and "What is JavaScript?". PLATEAU's data is not pre-determined how to use it, so if you take too many steps, you may lose interest. Innovative people tend to gravitate toward edgy things. How familiar it should be and how edgy it should remain. The problem is how to strike that balance.

Kawada: It might be good to divide the entrance according to the level of literacy.

How to make money with PLATEAU

-Are there any works that left an impression on you at PLATEAU Hack Challenge 2021?

Chomado: When I saw "I'll seriously try to take measures against Godzilla", I thought, "That's cool." I could tell that they were excited and had fun making it. How you use PLATEAU to stimulate your creativity by combining it with your personal favorite things?

In the work "I'm seriously trying to deal with Godzilla", I used PLATEAU to calculate the amount of damage when Godzilla passed through the Kasumigaseki area.

Kawada: When simulating natural disasters such as earthquakes, there are aspects that inevitably become graphic. I also think that the idea of ​​using Godzilla, which is a metaphor for disaster itself, for disaster prevention, came out as a great harvest from this hackathon. Another thing that caught my attention was the "Town Wind Simulation". I thought it would be nice to have a solution that assumes the future where drones will deliver various things. It was good that I proposed it along with the future prediction that "wind information will become as important as traffic information."

A project called "Machikaze Simulation" that looks at the future Japan where drones are responsible for delivery

Chomado: Also, I felt that "AR live distribution" is easy to monetize. The video of a giant Miku appearing in Shinjuku had a strong impact, and it would be nice to be able to put an AR advertisement in a real building. "We are doing this kind of sale at this tower, so please come." I think we can get advertising fees from companies, not from general consumers.

Uchiyama: Since the space in the city becomes practically infinite, it works very well with advertisements. We've had the idea of ​​holding a festival in a virtual space before, but when it comes to doing it in a space that actually exists, I feel that the virtual world has taken a step further. From the point of view of general consumers, 3D city data can be used for what? .

Kawada: When it comes to monetization, I thought Godzilla should work with Toho. Nowadays, it's hard to go to the cinema because of the corona virus, isn't it? When I thought that each industry must create something that can be sold in the current situation, I felt that it would be nice if each industry could collaborate with PLATEAU like this.

Uchiyama: You mean using PLATEAU as a material for proposing content, right?

Kawada: That's true, and from the point of view of tourism, I think it's a big preparation period. When the time comes when people can move again, tourists will flood in like a reaction to the past.

Uchiyama: I guess so.

Kawada: But I think there are a lot of things that we haven't grasped by ourselves. For example, if you search the name of a city on Instagram, people from overseas are taking pictures in places we don't know. Among them, for some reason, Koreans concentrate on visiting certain cities and taking pictures. I wondered why, and when I looked it up, the reason was "Lonely Gourmet".

Chomado: Is that the manga or drama "Kodoku no Gourmet"?

Tomu Kawada Developer / The eldest son of the three AR brothers Born in 1976 in Kumamoto Prefecture. After working for a sewing machine manufacturer for 10 years and engaging in patent development, he became the eldest son of the unprecedented development unit AR Three Brothers. From museums to black holes, from art to performing arts. Undertake a wide range of expansions. WIRED has continued to contribute in special features and serials since vol.1, which was republished in 2011, and the serialization on TVBros. J-WAVE "INNOVATION WORLD" is being broadcast every Friday from 20:00. The new company (tecture) is looking to expand into the construction sector.

Kawada: Yes. The reason is that Koreans are not very familiar with the culture of eating alone, so it's strange to eat alone and talk to yourself. But because it's strange, it seems to attract interest. "Lonely Gourmet" is very popular in Korea. Out of curiosity, I looked into places where Koreans were concentrated, and found that they were all covered in Kodoku no Gourmet.

Chomado: Your research ability is amazing...

Uchiyama: It's a so-called sacred place tour.

Kawada: There are many such things. We can't have visitors from overseas right now, but I think it's better for us to rediscover the strengths of our city, including the people of the local government, in the event that they do come back one day. "We thought this place was popular, but it's actually popular here." as a long period of preparation. Borrowing Mr. Chomado's words, I think it will be an opportunity not only for strong people, but also for citizens... people who are shy to use PLATEAU.

Uchiyama: I always want to challenge myself in the realm of civic tech (*3). The people of the city make their own.

Kawada: People who aren't strong.

Chomado: Nowadays, more and more people are using the word “metaverse” (*4), and everyone is saying it. I want to ride the flow while the waves are hot.

Uchiyama: For some reason, I feel that the Japanese metaverse tends not to scale. For example, you end up creating a very narrow virtual space and moving freely within it. I think one of the reasons is that it costs a lot of money to make it and it can't be made on a large scale.

Kawada: Things like digital twins and mirror worlds should actually be done by local governments.

Uchiyama: Even in such a place, it would be nice if PLATEAU was used as a base. There is a project called "Virtual Isetan" by Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, and there is a project called "Virtual Shinjuku" that expands it to the surrounding area. It was done by about two employees of the Ise store who were good at that sort of thing. That was based on PLATEAU, and they made it by adding only the outer wall and so on. That way, you can reduce the cost by 20 times.

Chomado: That's great. If you try to create something like Metaverse from scratch, the number of man-hours will inevitably increase.

From Project PLATEAU official website

Kawada: Correct. PLATEAU should be used where PLATEAU can be used. I think the PLATEAU map is good.

Chomado: How about seeing the town created in PLATEAU in a centralized way... How about something like the color of the created area?

Uchiyama: I wanted to do that, but at the moment there are too few colored areas, and I don't want it to look like things aren't going well, so I haven't done it. That's right.

Chomado: It might be a good idea to color code things like Done, Work in progress, and To do. to red, blue, and yellow.

Kawada: People have a feeling that they want to paint over.

Chomado: There is, there is. I hope that PLATEAU will become a platform where many people can participate more easily. Everyone can enter their own local data, and by entering it, it becomes visible and easy-to-understand data, and it becomes possible to go to play virtually ... "I raised this town." I'm in a state where I can say.

　By doing so, everyone will be motivated to add data, and as a result, I think it will be useful for everyone. It would be nice if there was one thing that everyone knew about, so that they could answer the question, "What is PLATEAU?"

How should we promote PLATEAU?

――If you two could freely create projects using PLATEAU, what would you like to create?

Kawada: I have a specific idea. When you tap the terminal in front of the building, you can scan the world in front of you and immediately find out how many people are in the building. I have already made this myself.

Uchiyama: Where did you get the city data from?

Kawada: I didn't know PLATEAU existed before, so I scanned it myself and created the city data (laughs).

Chomado: Yeah!

Kawada: Normally, you don't know how many people are in a building unless you go inside. In that way, I would like to create a system that can scan and visualize things from the outside that cannot be understood without going to the site. It is an image that incorporates the idea of ​​VPS (*5), which is one step ahead of GPS.

Uchiyama: I want to make use of the VPS system, so I've been trying various things, but most of them are overseas technologies.

Kawada: We want to create data for our country, our city, but if we try to create it, the money will flow to overseas companies. Not very good.

Uchiyama: It would be nice if those parts were also domestically produced. I think Japan is a little behind in the awareness of data conversion.

Kawada: I think I'm late. I have the impression that companies overseas are taking the lead in how to utilize 3D data of cities. It's Google or Apple. They are creating a system that allows everyone to embed flags in the city.

Yuya Uchiyama Born in Tokyo in 1989, Deputy Director, City Policy Division, City Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. After studying legal philosophy at Tokyo Metropolitan University and the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Public Policy, he joined the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in 2013. After working in the Water Management and Land Conservation Bureau, the Civil Aviation Bureau, and Assistant Secretary to the Minister, he assumed his current position.

Uchiyama: When I think about why it doesn't happen in Japan, I think there is something like the nature of the people. How do you handle information? I think there are a lot of people who look at the disadvantages rather than the advantages of digitizing something.

Kawada: There is one thing about digitization, isn't it? It's a little outside the theme of 3D city data, but for example, if you think, "Is there a novel written about this theme?" I think everyone will search and read it. However, there are many people who oppose it, and it cannot be realized.

When I think about why I want to digitize novels, I want to know if there were any novels written about this kind of thing in the past. is not. In the case of Mangamura, digitization has a dangerous image, but in the end, how you use it is important, isn't it?

Uchiyama: I've heard that foreign countries have a database of movie lines, and anyone can look up what lines were used and how often. For example, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has already created and released 2D city data, but I have the impression that its use has not yet spread.

From Project PLATEAU official website

――How should we spread PLATEAU to more layers?

Kawada: In order to keep PLATEAU alive, it's important to keep developers interested, and it's also important to actively create connections with companies. It might be a good idea to create one representative example that represents the country. An advanced initiative like PLATEAU is not a case of competition between companies or companies in the same industry. We have to work together. When you think, "How did you make that project?", you can say, "PLATEAU."

Uchiyama: I also want to work more and more with companies. In the world of IT, it takes only one year for a project to start producing results, so I think we have to keep up with that.

Chomado: After all, I want PLATEAU to be used on platforms that everyone knows. After that, if you use PLATEAU for CG, Unity is fine, but if you want to use it for GUI, what should you combine it with? It would be nice if it could be communicated to everyone in an easy-to-understand manner, and that the developers could play with it.

Kawada: Now, with the rise of open innovation, I think that Japanese developers are gathering if they just call. But developers often don't have a conversation with the client layer. I think that some of these people are thinking about starting a new business, and I think PLATEAU will be a starting point for such conversations.

Chomado: I would like to include up to ``the layer that will join if there is an initial start''. I think there are people who don't like digitization. People who say, "I want to do it on paper." I don't think it's a good idea to forcibly involve people who don't like it, so first of all, I'd like to start with the "cool engineers" who volunteered to participate in this contest. People who join” will be collected and examples will be created. If there is an excellent example, I think that this will be a good starting point, and more people will participate.