TeleAtlas is one of the big mapping companies, and is currently being taken over by Tom Tom. It has a huge database of locations and points of interest, and provides the key data that Tom Tom and others use to present your location and route on your GPS device.

However, the traditional view has always been an overhead 2D rendering, or at the most, a quasi-3D rendering that still shows no height for any landmark.

All that may be about to change, though, as TeleAtlas is working on 3D renderings of popular landmarks. Just check out these pictures of the Fenway park stadium in Boston.

The jump from 2D to 3D is huge, but necessary if GPS manufacturers and mapping companies are to distinguish their products from each other, and also fight off the threats posed by search engine and software companies such as Google and Microsoft. Both of these giants have software that enables anybody to develop their own 3D rendering of a place and place it online for others to download.

Effectively, what these companies are doing is developing a user-generated 3D map of the major points of interest across the globe - one that makes TeleAtlas's series of 2D datapoints look so last century.

The only thing for TeleAtlas to do, therefore, is to beat them at their own game, and as these images show, that's just what they're doing.

Already, they've compiled a list of over 500 European landmarks all fully rendered in 3D, and plan on producing another 1,000 3D landmarks in the US covering 20 major cities. The first device that supports this new 3D data is the Pioneer AVIC-HD3BT (now there's a name that trips off the tongue!), which was released earlier this year.

The future, therefore, is most definitely 3D. As Basak Ozer, vice president of global product marketing for TeleAtlas, says “Three dimensional digital maps deliver a navigation experience that is even more tangible and realistic, with features that can ultimately help improve map usability.” Looking at the results, you certainly can't argue with that.

It may take a few years for the whole world to be mapped out in 3D, but it'll surely happen, and TeleAtlas want to make sure that they're the ones doing the mapping.

[Source: GPSReview]