Altus InSite and Cube Cities: Commercial Real Estate Information Made Beautiful

Cube Cities has partnered with Altus Insite to produce high quality data visualizations of the major Canadian office markets. Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver can be seen in these Cube Views that show leasing information in existing buildings as well as leasing activity in buildings that are pre-leasing and under construction. Other Canadian cities will follow. To get access to more detailed 3D visualizations and for more information about this exciting new initiative, click here.

Note: Make sure to play these videos fullscreen and in 1080p HD to see finer detail.

Toronto

Calgary

Vancouver

Altus InSite & Cube Cities Information Page

The Evolving Inventory of Virtual Commercial Real Estate (on iPad)

Google and Apple have now released their latest 3D map offerings for the iOS market. Both Google Earth and Apple Maps now provide competing auto-generated imagery for a number of major US cities. Apple's new Maps introduces a fresh user interface for navigating a 3D city and from a commercial real estate perspective, Apple provides higher quality building imagery than what is currently available with Google's auto-generated, mesh-based, 3D buildings. 

Below are examples of the difference in building imagery quality between Google Earth and Apple Maps on the new iPad. Note that Google's 3D buildings appear the same on the Android version of Google Earth as they do on iOS.

One America Plaza, San Diego:

Google Earth 

Apple Maps

One and Two International Place, Boston:

Google Earth

Apple Maps

Washington Mutual Tower, Seattle:

Google Earth

Apple Maps

Apple's Maps do not currently allow users to load any external data. This means that only content provided by Apple can be viewed on the map. Currently this is limited to location information provided by Yelp and vehicle traffic data. The latest version of Google Earth for iPad does allow users to load external data, enabling use with a platform like Cube Cities. Below is an example of how Cube Cities can visualize building data for an office property downtown San Diego, on iPad. 

Cube Cities + Google Earth

As Google and Apple add 3D city coverage to their mobile maps the fidelity of both services will likely improve. At present, Google Earth for iPad (using external data from Cube Cities) is a more effective tool for analyzing commercial real estate, however Apple's building imagery is generally higher quality and available in more cities. New York and Chicago are noticeably missing on Google Earth for iPad but are available in 3D with Apple Maps.

The Skylines of Cube Cities

The Cube Cities technology platform allows for the rapid generation of city visualizations. This capability allows us to create amazing views of cities to illustrate urban density and building usage. In our cities with data coverage, we track existing structures, construction projects and proposed developments. All of these can be explored on our website with our Skylines page.

Lower Manhattan

Chicago's Loop

Downtown Toronto

Click here to visit our Skylines page to see these city views. Selecting any building will open a menu that links to the building's Grids page, showing where any available leases are located and allowing users to share building information.

Creating and Sharing Flights with Cube Cities

Users who add available space to Cube Cities can create automatic tours of their space options called Flights. With Flights, users add their available spaces to a Flight, provide it with a name and description, set the correct play order and play the flight.

When played, the Flight will automatically fly to the city view, the market view and then the building view for every space option. The Flight will pause at every available space and display the floorplan and other images associated with the space.

Flights are created as unique URL links that users can share with anyone for free. Cube Cities also makes it easy for users to email and Tweet their Flights. To create a Flight and share space optons today, simply create a Cube Cities account and add any available office or retail space.

Click here for an example

Markup Building Windows in Google Earth with Grids + See the View from Any Grid

Cube Cities provides a free service called Grids. Grids allows anyone to select a building and mark it up with a red pattern to identify areas of interest on a building. Simply click the city icon on the Grids page and then select a building to markup.

If you're signed in you can save the Grids you select, add a note and share this information with anyone via email or Twitter. The special link created by the Grids page also stores the same view of the building, so you can highlight building areas at street level or choose to showcase an area that might be hidden from the first view of the building.

Users can even see the window view from any selected Grid, just select the eyeball icon and the view will automatically move to the exact view from that building location. 

Try Grids now to find and share your favourite floor views from any building!