[From photographs to historical VRs]

requires flash:

before photography
location data included
paintings and drawings
verbal descriptions (diaries, journalism, novels)
government data (tax records, building records)
maps


so any vr that tries to recreate any part
of the world before photography
will inevitably be mostly guesses
and semirandom algorithmic variations
on plausible basic rules


but with photography
unreliable depictions of places
were gradually supplemented
by much more detailed and trustworthy and convenient and numerous
captures of moments in spacetime

that enforce severe local constraints
on those algorithms
(especially building facades)

with 'tourist attractions' documented best at first
while building interiors (and backsides)
were rarely documented at all

so Ulysses is set in a time
of painfully finite photographic documentation


most Dublin streets remained unimaged
maybe even until StreetView

and the first step towards a Ulysses VR
must be cataloguing all known photos
and refining the algorithmic simplification
of known architectural styles
to plausibly fill in gaps

---

is there already a way to grow a simcity on a dublin streetmap (and then descend into a streetview for exploration)?

from simcity 3000 in the year 2000 i find a free 271k 'Real-City Terrain'

and from 2012 a 3.76Mb SimTropolis terrain ("requires SC4TerraFormer")

Zynga's CityVille is free but my googling for 'Dublin' is flooded with discussion of that company's real customer service center in that city

it would be nice if you could say 'grow a city on this empty dublin streetmap' and watch it gradually populate the streets with residential and business neighborhoods, as property values fluctuate...