If you’re into miniature railways, you’ll probably know all about the world’s largest model railway, called Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg Germany. Google knows about it and added their own flair to the display with a miniature Google Maps car, and then proceeded to capture street views from ground level.
The process was captured in a 2-minute documentary video released by Google. The process included new cameras built by their partner Unilabs, which were mounted onto tiny vehicles which then actually drove through, or travelled on the train tracks in the display to capture full 360-degree images at points throughout.
The street view captured some of the 13,000 meters of track and more than 200,000 tiny citizens in the display, which includes ‘tiny replicas of a variety of German provinces, famous places in America and even a fully-functioning airport’.
The complete set of captured Street View images, which include full 360 degree pictures can be viewed at the special Miniatur Wonderland Google Maps mini-site.
It’s just one of those cool little asides that Google does to show that they’ve got a lot of fun in their heart. Check it out.
So easy to spend an entire day at the miniature wonderland. I was there in 2011. Definite must for anyone into their tech