3D Laser Scanning Services Gets Some Rail Mail
Digitize it using 3D Laser Scanning services
Do you remember the days of snail mail? Some of you probably don’t even know what it is. For all of you digital natives let me tell you what snail mail is. Snail mail is real mail that comes in a paper envelope. You lick the stamp, send it off, and it may take several day before it gets to its destination. That means it could take weeks before you got a response back. If you were anxious for something you might look out the window everyday for the mail truck. In London, they used to even have a type of underground rail system for delivering mail. That is all history now that we have computers to take care of our mail. It is an interesting piece of history. That is why a 3D laser scanning services company was asked to make a digital copy so that it can be remembered for generations to come before it gets renovated into something else.
Take a tour with 3D laser scanning
To be honest, I had never heard of the Mail Rail. Here is the U.S. we have those white U.S.P.S. trucks driving all over the road. I had just kind of assumed that all mail delivery was above ground. I had no idea that the Mail Rail was in operation even up to 2010 before it was shut down completely. It’s quite a cool idea if you ask me. Especially if you were a mail delivery person. There would be no need to check the weather every day. Now a 3D laser scanning services company has made a 3D model of all the platforms and tunnels so that it will remain a part of historical memory forever. People who find it interesting can take a 3D virtual tour using Oculous goggles.
3D laser scanning services lets you walk through it
Really the plan was to use 3D laser scanning services to create a virtual museum of the Mail Rail. This way people would be able to get a look at what the mail delivery system looked like back when things were new and not all run-down like they are today. The company ScanLab came in and did the scans using LiDar. LiDar is 3D laser scanning device that can assemble a 3D virtual image of an environment using light like a radar. The light bounces off the surface and reflects back onto a sensor. That sensor triangulates the light reflection as a virtual point. Together all of those points combined make up a data cloud. The data cloud is what used to reconstruct the the object as a digital image.
In my opinion, snail mail is still a better way of communicating. There was something about waiting for a letter that made it all that more special to get it. Today, we have eliminated the main, and we even get a bit testy if someone doesn’t send an email right away. I guess it is a sign of the times. It is good that we are using 3D laser scanning services to preserve a bit of our history, because we will never be going back.