Dubailand is back on with Marvel Theme Park

If there was anything to kick start something back into reality, it's an exclusive Marvel theme park. The dust has settled and it's time to bring back the big projects

Disney to introduce Marvel characters in Middle East theme park:

Disney plans to introduce the Avengers, X-Men,  Spider-Manand other Marvel characters in a theme-park setting for the first time since acquiring the comic book company in 2009. The Marvel Adventure family entertainment center is expected to open in late 2013 in the United Arab Emirateswith superhero-themed attractions, restaurants and shops. The eight-acre indoor mini theme park will be part of the $5-billion City of Arabia entertainment, commercial and residential development in Dubailand.

This paragraph is interesting:

The corporate parent of Marvel has gone to great lengths to make clear that the Dubai project is strictly a licensing agreement not involving Disney theme parks or Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company. To that end, Marvel issued a statement that read in part: "The Marvel entertainment destination is not a theme park, it is a family entertainment center."

But for theme park and comic book fans, Marvel Adventure marks the first foray into a themed entertainment setting under the nascent Disney-Marvel partnership, stoking curiosity about what Imagineering has planned for the superheroes at the company's theme parks in California, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Read the full story at the LA Times

Dubai is running out of time, gentlemen

A war in an apocalyptic Dubai? This is a videogame based in the future. You can quite clearly see the Burj Khalifa in the background - and the team appears to be liberating Dubai after it seems to be taken over post sandstorms. Here's the video:



It paints a horrible scenario:

IT'S BEEN 6 MONTHS SINCE DUBAI WAS WIPED OFF THE MAP BY A CATACLYSMIC SANDSTORM. Once the world's most fantastical city, Dubai is now its most opulent ruin. Ravaged by cataclysmic sandstorms, THE CITY LIES BURIED, reclaimed by the desert. Abandoned, it has become a no-man's-land for refugees and outlaws. While most people fled the now-barren wasteland, U.S. Army Colonel John Konrad and the 33rd Infantry remained behind to PROTECT THOSE INCAPABLE OF ESCAPE. Unable to contact anyone in Dubai, the world believed  KONRAD AND HIS TEAM DEAD, until they picked up a weak distress signal. As Captain Walker, you and your squad of Delta Operators INFILTRATE THE TRECHEROUS REGION to locate survivors. There, you and your men will experience madness - A world shattered by the failings of great men. You will face an enemy you were never trained to fight - Fellow soldiers prepared to accept the consequences of their actions. You will walk a line - That razor-thin edge separating your mission from your duty. THERE IS NO ESCAPE from Dubai. It is the end - of honor and duty - when the storm has stripped you to the bone and ONLY THE LINE REMAINS

Looks like there is still construction going on! and you can see more about the Fall of Dubai at the spec ops site, but it is gruesome.

The game is called Spec Ops: The Line  (for those into this kinda stuff) - and it's on xbox360

More at http://www.specopstheline.com/us/#info - but it is gruesome, even though it is a game. You have been warned.

from Joystiq

Burj Khalifa Dubai Map Extravaganza

The blur between map fiction and reality is changing. Years ago, we had the option of a physical atlas or your imagination. The world has changed and we are able to view the world in different ways. Satellite imagery of areas is readily available and detailed mapping have been brought to market by consumers such as Bing, Google and soon Apple, with their announcement of Apple Maps. Flyover looks exciting! And so does user generated maps. Openmaps is a great mapping product available for everyone and for everyone to contribute. When Google Streetview (only available in some cities) is also exciting and when it first came out, everyone was gagging to see their own home. There were concerns about privacy, but Streetview game changing - and so is this new wave of consumer mapping. Understanding your context for the layman is more an more important, whether it's to facebook checkin or to tag and geolocate their data or position. Cartographers (those people that make maps) will probably be either super excited or overly angry about what's happening. But to Joe Public,  it's exciting. What's also exciting is a new wave of photography or bold photographers who are taking some amazing shots at amazing places - and then using Photoshop to make it even more so! Map Mashups,  Apps and other such things are making this space very exciting. And so, with Bing Maps updating their satellite imagery , we thought it useful to look at a place in the world, that didn't really exist in the old days of mapping - Burj Khalifa, Dubai's tallest building:

Let's look at Bing first:

It's fairly simple, but you see their new edition with satellite imagery and it's a little more impressive:

Yes, it's more than impressive.

We have the official map from the Dubai Government:

 - clear, fun and simple.

The Open Street Map does what it was supposed to do:

and it's not bad considering it is open sourced!

The Google maps range from amusing to great. This first one, pitches Burj Khalifa in a warped way, not really as a the tallest image in the world:

But the mapping it pretty damn good and it's what you're used to. And it gets better with its openGL version:

You can see that the Burj has grown somewhat. But the Google Earth version is pretty damn amazing:

if you have google earth, you can even fly in...almost.

But the reality looks even more amazing if you look at GeoEye's satelllite photo:

And you can see that the reality from closer up is very similar with this photo from Stephanie Compoint

as these two also show:

And it's also interesting looking at the original plan of the Burj Khalifa (then named Burj Dubai)

and from Emaar's brochures:

For map geeks, it's an interesting time - we look forward to see if the Burj Khalifa will appear on Apple Maps on ios6 - and indeed whether anyone else steps into the mapping game.

With global connectivity increasing at pace, in a few years, you may not even need a physical map. But in the mean time, we can still dream.

Burj Khalifa - At the top

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