Access pass
Dear valued visitor,
Thank you for exploring our free 32,7-gigapixel image. We hope you enjoy the breathtaking view! Would you like to see how the 2.090 gigapixel looks like?
To unlock the 63 times bigger full-resolution version and unlock all points of interest, consider to purchase an ACCESS PASS. Your support directly contributes to this privately funded project, enabling us to continue pushing the boundaries of technology and art. We deeply appreciate your support in bringing this ambitious project to life.
Questions and answers
Capturing over 20 times the data of the current world record presented a significant challenge. A substantial portion of the budget was dedicated to acquiring hardware capable of processing the immense volume of image data. To achieve this, we have buildt a custom camera rig specifically designed for capturing these images and have invested in fast network infrastructure, state of the art graphics cards, fast storage and even faster temporary storage.
This ambitious project represents a considerable financial investment, and we sincerely hope it captivates and inspires our audience. We deeply appreciate every contribution — thank you for your support!
About 3 days of shooting, but due to technical issues it took some time to get started and some of the images are captured with overlap to be on the safe side. The sky was captured at different location few weeks later.
You can pay for full resolution access and other perks which are being developed, by creditcard (Stripe) or VIPPS.
This project has been ongoing for approximately three years. Most of the time has then been used for building up enough hardware capable of processing the vast amount of data, many hours researching and developing CUDA software used for processing images, preperation of raw-data for rendering and of course rendering and post processing.
I can imagine that the public perception of this project focuses on the challenge of saving all the images to a hard drive and then figuring out how to stitch them together. While that is indeed part of the project, it is actually one of the easier tasks. The true essence of this project lies in solving the unexpected problems that arise, and they appear at every turn. Some of the challenges include:
- Designing a rigid rig capable of holding the heavy lens and camera without excessive wobbling.
- Capturing 20 RAW images per second, hour after hour, couping with moving parts, cables, betteries, memory cards etc.
- Developing a storage system capable of continuously storing and moving hundreds of thousands of small files non-stop for several days.
- Keeping a computer running at full capacity, utilizing two RTX 4090s at it’s full speed.
- Developing software which is capable of processing more than 380.000 images of all kind. Some algorithms struggle when there are no details in the images that can be processed.
- Correcting colors and removing haze from images captured on several days with warying light condition is a challenge.
- This panorama is made of 4 smaller panoramas. Most work in post was done on each of the 4 panoramas. But even editing 1/4th of the panorama of this size is quite a challenge. Almost every picture had to be corrected. To fit images side by side from 1/4th of the panorama you need 8K display to fit most of the images and you even need to run virtual desktop which makes your workspace even bigger.
- Working with images of this size requiers a vast amount of local fast storage. There actually is practial limit how much fast storage you can fit in a standard PC and this is a challenge. The cost for stepping up to pro grade servers utilizing huge amount of fast local storage is astronomical. This solution is not for our wallets.
These are just few of the problems but there are many more. As we see in the final result, all of the problems can be solved.
