Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#1

Post by locopati » Mon, May 03, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#2

Post by locopati » Mon, May 03, 2010, 4:14 PM UTC

Posted because it's an interesting picture technically, because it's bizarre (to me) to see a city like this in a desert (yes, Vegas is bizarre too), because zooming in, it's almost impossible to see people (contrast with any major NA/European/Chinese city).

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#3

Post by GFischer » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:03 PM UTC

locopati wrote: post #2

Posted because it's an interesting picture technically, because it's bizarre (to me) to see a city like this in a desert (yes, Vegas is bizarre too), because zooming in, it's almost impossible to see people (contrast with any major NA/European/Chinese city).

Stories about Dubai and Detroit are fascinating to me, because they are a kind of "fall of civilization" bizarre..

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#4

Post by mortenjorck » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:25 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #3

locopati wrote: post #2

Posted because it's an interesting picture technically, because it's bizarre (to me) to see a city like this in a desert (yes, Vegas is bizarre too), because zooming in, it's almost impossible to see people (contrast with any major NA/European/Chinese city).

Stories about Dubai and Detroit are fascinating to me, because they are a kind of "fall of civilization" bizarre..

These two metropolises make an interesting point of comparison.

Detroit built up in response to a titanic industry it thought would never go away, and had no plan in place for when it did. Dubai built up in anticipation of becoming an international hub for business, but had no plan in place for when it failed to happen.

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#5

Post by jamesshamenski » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:26 PM UTC

some of the immediate buildings to the right (whitish) have a strange bloated imperfection. kinda ruins the picture.

Zooming back is great as you really see that new skyscraper. Zooming in is pretty good too.

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#6

Post by wallflower » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:32 PM UTC

Reminds me of a Star Wars (non-classic, CGI) set. My favorite Dubai photo 'Foggy Dubai'.

Real-life castles in the clouds.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/playing-with-light/2399114248/i...

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#7

Post by BoppreH » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:35 PM UTC

I think that's the biggest image of this kind I've ever seen.

The details are astonishing (I could see the plate number of a bus that was not even visible at first), but I found the visualization software subpar. Zooming in or out would just black the picture sometimes while loading the new tiles and the scroll wheel would zoom in the center of the screen instead of the mouse position.

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#8

Post by ramidarigaz » Mon, May 03, 2010, 5:59 PM UTC

I'd never realized how enormous the Burj Dubai is.

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#9

Post by olegk » Mon, May 03, 2010, 7:24 PM UTC

Zoom all the way in. The quality is so bad, you can downsample it by the factor of 2 (or maybe even 4) without any detail loss, (which reduces the number of pixels by the factor of 4, or 16 respectively). So it's really a 3-10 gigapixel panorama.

Also notice ugly vertical stripes in the sky area. I'm not sure what caused that.

Re: Dubai in 45 gigapixels

#10

Post by smaher » Mon, May 03, 2010, 7:41 PM UTC

ramidarigaz wrote: post #8

I'd never realized how enormous the Burj Dubai is.

I was recently in Dubai and they had pictures of it superimposed in cities around the world. Check out how massive it would be if it were in San Francisco: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_maher/4444617588/