This is it! We're announcing the construction of a wind farm near you!
And you want to see for yourself the effect it will have on the landscape you know so well.
Of course, the developer must present the visual impact of his project. But his main concern is to reassure you about this impact. To produce the photomontages that will convince you, he has a choice of weapons: firstly, the locations from which he takes the photos, and secondly, the distances. I've always been fascinated by the promoters' ability to find places in the landscape from which the wind turbines can be seen little or not at all. It obviously makes no sense to stand behind a tree to make a photomontage, and yet ... And then there's the choice of colors, luminosity, and the format in which the photos are presented. All this counts.
What you want is to be able to see the wind turbines from all the places you're familiar with, as if they were already there! And the freedom to create your own photomontages from these locations, which you can then compare with the promoter's images.
We don't think the promoter fakes them, but after all, he could be wrong...
The preview application presented here has a dual purpose: firstly, it lets you browse a familiar landscape, adding future wind turbines in augmented reality, and secondly, it makes it easy to produce precise, objective photomontages.
When you don't have dedicated professional software, making these photomontages isn't easy. You need some knowledge of cartography and optics, as well as trigonometry and photography. There are specialized software packages for these different disciplines, but it takes quite a bit of time to familiarize yourself with each one and move from one to the other to end up with a photomontage.
The application is called ©WindVisu. It's not free, of course, but it's available at a price that can't be beaten by any other software on the market. And it has an essential advantage over them: the ability to create photomontages in the field from a simple smartphone, without having to sit at home in front of a complicated office tool.
This application is available for Android smartphones and tablets. If you only own an Apple device, don't bother. But if, like almost three out of four people, you own an Android-powered mobile, the rest of this presentation may be of interest to you.
To find out a little more about how it works, take a look here.