2.5 gigapixel image

Taco Pope · Post by **Taco Pope** » 2004-11-17 03:26am

http://www.tpd.tno.nl/Pics/DII/gigazoom/Delft2.htm

Zoom in on the tower in the distance. You can tell the time.

Post by **Dalton** » 2004-11-17 03:55am

Wow. I can clearly see the text on the license plates of some of those cars.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-11-17 08:40am

Something must be wrong, it gets totatlly blurry after 1 click of zoom.

Flakin · Post by **Flakin** » 2004-11-17 09:22am

Good grief, imagine the game of Wheres Waldo you could have with this......

Thats impressive.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2004-11-17 10:41am

Ace Pace wrote:Something must be wrong, it gets totatlly blurry after 1 click of zoom.

wait for it to load

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-11-17 02:30pm

holeee shite that's impressive. now i almost want to get a camera that can support that much pixelage

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2004-11-17 03:56pm

That's incredible. You can look out and see everything in detail. Even the buildings way out on the horizon are clearly visible after some zooming.

EDIT: Wow, I can spot a CBS building WAAAY out on the farthest reaches of the picture. This is really something.

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2004-11-17 04:08pm

Holy damn Satan! People can be seen crossing a bridge all the way back of the picture!

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2004-11-17 04:37pm

OMFG!

Wonder how much that lens costs? In the many milijons I think.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-11-17 05:04pm

Question, who took the pic? An uni in town or what?

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2004-11-17 05:07pm

To bad it is a fake...

Found this

The end of the big road in the middle of the pic.

Ory'hara · Post by **Ory'hara** » 2004-11-17 05:19pm

It's a composite picture. I doubt they were paying attention to making sure that nothing was moving inbetween frames. You can see a couple places where there's an edge that doesn't match up.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2004-11-17 05:20pm

Faram wrote:To bad it is a fake...

Yes, and no. The picture was made by stitching together hundreds of individual pictures and then doing some optimizations. Someone kinda goofed.

From the company page:

The approach

The 2.5 gigapixel image is a composition of images rather than a single image. TNO developed a sophisticated approach to merge the many images - all 600 of them. The photos were taken automatically using a modern consumer camera and a powerful 400 mm lens. The camera was positioned automatically using a computer-controlled pan-tilt unit. Each of the 600 photos overlaps, an arrangement that ensured very accurate positioning and enabled us to stitch the images automatically into one giant image of 78,797 by 31,565 pixels. The most difficult tasks were processing these large images and comparing the overlapping images.
Long 'exposure time'

All 600 photos were taken over a period of 1 hour and 15 minutes. Taking a single photo and moving the camera to a new position took approximately seven seconds. Thanks to the long 'exposure time', some interesting artefacts are visible at the edges of the various photos. They include a parked car that seems to merge into a bus and a walking torso.

After the photographic session, considerable effort was required to calculate the final result. It took about 24 hours to compare the overlapping photos and optimise them. Stitching the photos into one image required the capacity of 5 high-end pcs for three full days.

The final result allows the viewer to zoom in on the city of Delft and its surroundings at a resolution never seen before.

More details about the approach.

edit: to get that picture in one shot is impossible unless you're the CIA or NASA. The camera lens would have to be several feet in diameter and the film negative or CCD would be about the size of a sheet of typing paper. The camera would weigh several tons and cost millions of dollars.

Lt. Dan · Post by **Lt. Dan** » 2004-11-18 04:02pm

Now lets find some one it their house...

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2004-11-18 05:06pm

Lt. Dan wrote:Now lets find some one it their house...

Yeah, there's gotta be a naked chick somewhere in that picture.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2004-11-19 12:09am

My favorite artifact is the ghost at the crosswalk. If you look at the end of the big grey building on the right hand side you'll see him.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2004-11-19 03:07am

to get that picture in one shot is impossible unless you're the CIA or NASA. The camera lens would have to be several feet in diameter and the film negative or CCD would be about the size of a sheet of typing paper. The camera would weigh several tons and cost millions of dollars.

Yeah, I wonder how this camera compares.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2004-11-19 04:04am

I like there's a car halfway down the big road that has hit a light pole.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-11-19 01:49pm

Sriad wrote:My favorite artifact is the ghost at the crosswalk. If you look at the end of the big grey building on the right hand side you'll see him.

Are you talking about that floating torso beside the round blue bicycle sign?

Lindar · Post by **Lindar** » 2004-11-19 02:26pm

*blinks* Definitely an image that will take a whiel to get bored with...

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2004-11-19 07:21pm

Mayabird wrote:
Sriad wrote:My favorite artifact is the ghost at the crosswalk. If you look at the end of the big grey building on the right hand side you'll see him.
Are you talking about that floating torso beside the round blue bicycle sign?

Yea, that one.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2004-11-19 09:41pm

For some reason the blue shirted bicyclist, on the left side of the road on the right side at the bottom, looks like he's got some sort of lobster claw for a head.
Cool picture any way.

Lt. Dan · Post by **Lt. Dan** » 2004-11-19 09:59pm

aerius wrote:
Lt. Dan wrote:Now lets find some one it their house...
Yeah, there's gotta be a naked chick somewhere in that picture.

Yup, that's what I was thinking.

Mrs Kendall · Post by **Mrs Kendall** » 2004-11-20 10:18am

Ok guys you can't just say by the grey building and the blue bicycle sign... I can't find this floating torso and I've seen at least three blue bicycle signs, and of course there are a lot of grey buildings in this pic.

And I'm gonna be much more careful while undressing in my own house if there is this shit going on, and people like you looking all day for a chance at seeing a naked chic in her house.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-11-20 09:40pm

aerius wrote:
Faram wrote:To bad it is a fake...
Yes, and no. The picture was made by stitching together hundreds of individual pictures and then doing some optimizations. Someone kinda goofed.

It's pretty cool, but not that impressive. I notice when I zoom in, there's at least 3 or more "levels" of resolution, so it's basically a big jpg for the entire thing at not-so-high res, and as you get closer it loads the "next worst" picture of that section, so your computer doesn't have to get it all at the same time.