Views of the Earth

About this Site

I have been doing images of both artificial and real world landscapes since i started generating pictures with the computer. Examples of completely artificial landscapes made by me can be found on my website.

In the past technical capabilities of computers and software have been the main limiting factor for generating high quality images based on satellite images. Therefore systems like Google Earth or NASA World Wind - while using quite high resolution data - can offer only a relatively crude and unrealistic quality of images and are not suited for generating pictures for large scale prints.

But recent advances in both hardware and software development made it possible to handle the large amounts of data required for accurate images in a state-of-the-art rendering system and render high quality views of the earth surface. I created this website to demonstrate the possibilities and show some of the most impressive regions of the earth in realistic views.

For demonstrating the possibilities of creating very large scale images i started rendering a 5 Gigapixel image.

How the images are created

The earth surface views on this site are generated using computer rendering techniques. To find out more about the technical details see the technical information page.

Buying prints

I recently introduced the possibility to order prints of the images shown here. Have a look at the print order page to learn more about this.

Licensing images

Information on the topic of image licensing can be found on the licensing information page.

Credits

For creating these images i made use of various software tools and used satellite data from different sources. To find more about the used programs and data sources have a look at the credits page.

Further questions?

I added a frequently asked questions page with questions i have been frequently asked concerning this site and the images here. If your particular question is not covered there send me a mail.