Downtown Huntsville aerial

A view of downtown Huntsville and the Courthouse Square looking east, as seen from the steeple at the Church of the Nativity Episcopal. (Bob Gathany | bgathany@al.com)

(Bob Gathany / bgathany@al.com)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - A group of NASA interns and local college students plan to spend most of this weekend hunkered behind laptops in downtown Huntsville.

Their mission: create a realistic, digital rendering of an entire downtown block using SketchUp 3D modeling software. The winning team gets a cash prize, and all the entries will be submitted for possible use on Google Maps.

Chad Emerson, CEO of Downtown Huntsville Inc., which is sponsoring the inaugural Map-a-Thon, said Google's current aerial map for the Rocket City gives the city a flat, two-dimensional appearance. A growing number of U.S. cities are supplementing Google's aerial maps with detailed 3D renderings to show how things appear at street level.

This weekend's inaugural Map-a-Thon competition, which starts at 9 a.m. Saturday and goes through noon Sunday, "will take downtown Huntsville from 2D to 3D" on Google Maps, said Emerson.

See the Map-a-Thon Facebook page for more information and contest rules.



The 36-hour mapping competition has drawn teams from Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, as well as a group of NASA interns. Teams will scatter around downtown photographing buildings, streets, trees and other objects to be recreated in SketchUp; the mapping will primarily be done at the Downtown Huntsville Inc. office on Washington Street.

Local companies that do 3D mapping, including AEgis Technologies and Solid Earth, will have advisors on hand during the competition to help answer students' questions.

"The students get the opportunity to interact with professionals in the field and have a real end game," Emerson told AL.com Tuesday, "and the city gets the benefit of going 3-D."