Re: planning the next steps

[Vitaly Y Kulikov <vkulikov@MIT.EDU>]

Hi all,

My major plans for the term include taking two classes, applying for Ph.D., 
and working on the BMG project. Because my course workload is not large this 
term, I plan to devote most of my time to work on the BMG project.

The first task I am working on right now is to make my basemap coloring 
program faster and more robust so that we could load the complete map of the 
MIT campus and color it in a reasonable time. I did some work in this 
direction during the summer, but there is still some work to be done. Once, 
the map is colored, I want to create the actual surface by extruding the map 
into 3D using the height data we have, Once we have a 3D model to work with, 
we can apply more realistically looking texture to it, as well as, perhaps, 
populate the surface with some objects such as trees. Then, by populating the 
surface with building models, we can get a realistic model of the whole MIT 
campus.

I do not expect the first task to take me longer than a month, month and a 
half. Then, I will have quite a large choice of problems to tackle. The one 
that I am mostly thinking about now is mapping pictures of different parts of 
the campus to the model that we construct. This way, we can make the model of 
the campus as close to the original as possible. This is an interesting task 
that involves a lot of challenges such as making the algorithm scalable enough 
to process the whole campus. The problem could become the topic for my MEng 
thesis. Also, of course there is also quite a lot of work inside the BMG 
pipeline that I can do.

Because I take only two classes, almost any meeting time will work for me. I 
am available any time after 4pm, so you can just email me the time and the 
place, and I will be there.

See you all soon,
Vitaly