The first time I heard about this was last week when I was listening to the economic issues that the article mentions on NRK "political quarter" (NRK is the national broadcaster) with the word "waste" being thrown around a lot. This article from VG debates the cost and puts it into contrast what could have been done instead: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/q6k3ko/skipstunnelen-er-historis... ... it's been contentious as I understand.
Most of the Norway's Western coast (basically the extent of the country) is mountainous so building infrastructure there inevitably involves blasting the rock. At the same time the country is huge, bigger than Germany or the UK. So naturally a lot of tunnels.
This one a bit special: most of the boat traffic through it are meant to be ferries so it is to be commissioned and managed by Norwegian Road Authority. At the same time it's quite unique if only due to enormous cross-section and can't share many usual national design solutions for the tunnels. For instance my company was asked a quotation for a PA system for it and it's really a challenge. So it's no wonder that it's delayed so much: it requires a lot of bespoke solutions.
When an architecture company seemingly uses AI to render mockups, they really need to ensure consistency and accuracy. It's not that difficult nowadays. It was quite confusing trying to understand the differences in design between pictures and to compute why the tunnel seems so short compared to the mountain, until I realized it must have been laziness; not laziness because they are using AI, but laziness to do their job right.
I suspect quickly slapped together 3d renders photoshopped into actual landscape images. With very limited attention to detail when it comes to matching perspective or lighting between render and photo, or when it comes to blending them together
There are more images like [1] that are just the cheap 3d renders, with less of the photoshop butchery
I don't see anything in those visualizations that makes me think AI. Its completely run-of-the-mill architect visualizations that have always been atrocious.
I can't see TFA due to cloudflare, but there is a unique image style used in a lot of architectural mockups of proposed buildings and things that also looks very strange and uncanny. I can't find any examples of it online right now unfortunately, but could that be what they're doing?
The first time I heard about this was last week when I was listening to the economic issues that the article mentions on NRK "political quarter" (NRK is the national broadcaster) with the word "waste" being thrown around a lot. This article from VG debates the cost and puts it into contrast what could have been done instead: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/q6k3ko/skipstunnelen-er-historis... ... it's been contentious as I understand.
Having no map is weird. Wikipedia has one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stad_Ship_Tunnel
That's kind of cool. Norway also has roundabouts in tunnels. I guess they like tunnels.
Most of the Norway's Western coast (basically the extent of the country) is mountainous so building infrastructure there inevitably involves blasting the rock. At the same time the country is huge, bigger than Germany or the UK. So naturally a lot of tunnels.
This one a bit special: most of the boat traffic through it are meant to be ferries so it is to be commissioned and managed by Norwegian Road Authority. At the same time it's quite unique if only due to enormous cross-section and can't share many usual national design solutions for the tunnels. For instance my company was asked a quotation for a PA system for it and it's really a challenge. So it's no wonder that it's delayed so much: it requires a lot of bespoke solutions.
I bet the cost-benefit is actually negative. But it is kind of cool, I guess.
Need them for trolls to move around.
When an architecture company seemingly uses AI to render mockups, they really need to ensure consistency and accuracy. It's not that difficult nowadays. It was quite confusing trying to understand the differences in design between pictures and to compute why the tunnel seems so short compared to the mountain, until I realized it must have been laziness; not laziness because they are using AI, but laziness to do their job right.
I'd be very surprised if this was AI, it's too bad-looking. The lighting is all wrong, there's noticeable repeating rock textures
Yeah it looks more like photocollage creatively photoshopped. Perspective is very weird in picture 3 too, very cubist.
I suspect quickly slapped together 3d renders photoshopped into actual landscape images. With very limited attention to detail when it comes to matching perspective or lighting between render and photo, or when it comes to blending them together
There are more images like [1] that are just the cheap 3d renders, with less of the photoshop butchery
https://newatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com/archive/snohett...
And they've been around for years.
You can see a copy of that last image (3rd in the gallery) from 2017 at https://web.archive.org/web/20170707052808/https://www.ship-... and at https://newatlas.com/stad-ship-tunnel-interview-terje-andrea... .
A copy of the first image in the gallery is at https://dozr.com/blog/stad-ship-tunnel dated 2021.
Edit: ahhh, 2017 and 2021 were the previous two big announcements about the tunnel. See my notes at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48597546 .
> not laziness because they are using AI, but laziness to do their job right.
It correlates often enough.
I don't see anything in those visualizations that makes me think AI. Its completely run-of-the-mill architect visualizations that have always been atrocious.
I can't see TFA due to cloudflare, but there is a unique image style used in a lot of architectural mockups of proposed buildings and things that also looks very strange and uncanny. I can't find any examples of it online right now unfortunately, but could that be what they're doing?
Previous HN postings which had comments are:
"A plan to build a ship tunnel" (2017), at http://newatlas.com/stad-ship-tunnel-interview-terje-andreas... with 29 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13920841
"First ship tunnel to be built under Norwegian mountains" (2021), at https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/norway-ship-tunnel/in... with 25 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540805
See also gCaptain at https://gcaptain.com/worlds-first-ship-tunnel-to-bypass-dang... from 2017 and https://gcaptain.com/norway-gives-green-light-for-worlds-fir... from 2021.