Google Street View is quite useful if you want to know how the facade of a specific location looks like or virtually walk a few blocks to check out the surroundings. This technology has also allowed us to visit some of the most popular places in certain countries and even very remote places like the depths of the ocean. To achieve all of this, Google uses many vehicles with special cameras that take pictures of every possible angle and stitches them together. The vehicles come in a variety of sizes, for example, to go around the streets they use the Street View Car, for those places inaccessible by car they use the Trike, the Trolley can access narrow spaces like the space between art pieces in museums and the Trekker is compact enough to be carried in a backpack. Now, the company has created a very special vehicle, which is tiny enough to take pictures of the railway model Miniatur Wuderland.
The model consists of almost 16,000 meters of train tracks and it represents many famous places around the world. Miniatur Wunderland is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany, but Street View will let us see some spots that are typically inaccessible to the average visitor. Google partnered with Ubilabs to build such a small car with its tiny cameras so we could see the miniature railway model at a “street level”.
The oldest section in Miniatur Wunderland is the fictional town of Knuffingen, where we will get to see many places as if we were one of its 10,000 inhabitants. There’s a farmer’s market, a fire department station and a train station. There’s a replica of Hamburg, where you can see a soccer match or see how people hang out at the docks. Central Germany offers views of a traditional Town Center and a castle. We can witness a typical Oktoberfest celebration in Bavaria and visit the famous Neuschwanstein Castle. Austria offers a winter scenario with sky slopes and an Alpine train ride. There are many bridges and mountain villages in Switzerland and the cold scenery of Scandinavia is represented in a humorous way. Some famous spots in America include the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore and Cape Canaveral. There’s also a fully functional airport.