Digital maps are flat, but that’s changing. Mapping companies are adding three dimensions to their maps, to enhance the view people can get.

I spent part of a recent day driving around Boston in a TeleAtlas minivan outfitted with two on-board computers, 1,000GB of storage (half of it for backup) and, on top of the van, two lasers, six cameras and a GPS antenna. The lasers track geographic data like height and slope of roads and the surroundings, and these are combined with the pictures and existing TeleAtlas data to create digital maps in full 3-D.

A TeleAtlas data-collection vehicle.

The driver follows routes set up for him by the company and downloaded ahead of time, and other than making sure that the van is following the route, the cameras and laser do the rest of the work.

This van is one of about 50 TeleAtlas runs globally that is driving around locations, primarily in the U.S. and Europe, taking pictures about every 8 meters of entire buildings and feeding them into the hard drive. My driver, Christopher Errizo, has done about 60,000 miles in this van since February, starting in Louisville, Ky. Depending on weather and light conditions, he can go from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m., and pull in about 20GB of data a day.

On the Road to Mapping Maturity

The question is, why are TeleAtlas, and its rival Navteq, the other big database for digital mapping information, going 3-D?

It’s a sign that technology is advancing. Even some high-end cell phones can now handle 3-D images and other content. “As networks get more robust, you can download video,” notes Darren Koenig, director of wireless, Internet and telecom at TeleAtlas, in a recent interview.

So far, though, the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 310 Travel Companion is the only product in the U.S. to offer the TeleAtlas 3-D feature on a handheld—it bought TeleAtlas’ 3-D Landmarks for about 400 landmarks in the U.S. and Canada, an offering it introduced in September.

TeleAtlas' 3-D rendering of Yankee Stadium in New York

In Europe, Sony’s PlayStation Portable Go!Explore uses TeleAtlas’ 3-D landmarks and includes the nascent TeleAtlas 3-D maps of cities like Berlin and London. MioMap, a European maker of portable navigation devices, offers these maps on its new C620 models. Jack Gold, president of J. Gold Associates, a technology consultancy in Northborough, Mass., says that data in three dimensions is better for the human eye, but compares 3-D mapping to 3-D interface Windows Aero, in Microsoft Vista.