They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so imagine a world where anything you can count or measure can be turned into beautiful and physically accurate images automatically, by anyone with access to the Internet.
We have made a big step towards that with ‘Show Me’ - a new tool for making anything that can be counted or measured visible. Show Me will let many more users to adopt our approach to making sense of twenty-first century challenges by turning complex data into meaningful images and animations.
In its simplest form, users will enter a number on a website. After a few seconds an embeddable animation will appear. A slightly more advanced interface will give users control of the whole visualisation process including styles, text, scaling objects and locations. Developers can add advanced visualisation capabilities to their own tools with a single API call.
Bespoke animations, like our award-winning film showing New York City’s carbon footprint, can have a big impact but also a hefty cost. Now, ShowMe, being developed with AI specialists Rocketmakers, will be available on a software-as-a-service basis. It will work within any third-party app or from its own Web-app.
Sustainability Managers, or anyone else with stories to tell about emissions, offsets, savings or targets, will be able to illustrate them with meaningful images of carbon dioxide gas. Journalists can instantly depict air pollution data in a way that engages the reader. And teachers can create custom animations to make any quantitative information relevant and relatable to their pupils - the number of people evacuated from Dunkirk filling the open areas near the school, or the school’s consumption of water visualised in real-time as a fountain in the playground. In fact, anyone will be able to turn raw numbers into engaging imagery that captures imagination and helps us better understand the world we inhabit.
Development of the prototype ShowMe tool is being funded by a grant from Innovate UK. The initial version will just show gases - in particular carbon dioxide - but it will soon visualise anything: any gas, liquid, solid or bulk quantity; any concentration (for example, to visualise air or water pollution); and any collection of discrete objects - such as a crowd of people.
Show Me can add custom, responsive 3D graphics to any ‘traditional’ app. without impact to performance
Real World Visuals is setting up a new company to commercialise the product and will be seeking SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) funding in the New Year. If you are interested in investing in the company and/or participating in a Beta testing phase please get in touch.