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.

Further Information

• To find out more about the technical details how these images are created see the technical information page.
• You can order prints of a selection of the earth views shown here on the print order page.
• Information on the topic of image licensing can be found on the licensing information page.
• The programs and data sources used for creating these images are listed on the credits page.
• I added a frequently asked questions page with questions i have been frequently asked concerning this site and the images here.