Google’s ongoing endeavor to promote its popular Street View service took the company to Hamburg, Germany back in January 2016, and on one of the smallest-scale adventures that the search giant has yet to face. In fact, because the company decided it wanted to give the world a street-level view of the city’s “Miniatur Wunderland,” Google couldn’t even use its ordinary Street View technology or vehicles. That’s because Miniatur Wunderland is an exceptionally detailed exhibit showing scaled down models of various cities and districts from around the world. Some easily recognizable scenes from the exhibition include Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle, Oktoberfest, a German county fair, the Las Vegas Strip, a farmer’s market in Knuffingen, Ski Slopes in Austria, Mount Rushmore, and Hamburg itself.
To capture the images for Street View, Google had to create miniature devices that could “drive” around the streets of each miniature model and capture images. Taking things a step further, the company also designed a separate, camera-enabled vehicle to take shots from the scaled down train tracks running through many of the scenes. It also had a non-functioning miniaturized Google Street View car created so that it could appear in some of the captured scenes. What makes the images remarkable is how detailed the models, including the photobombing Google car, really are. They were designed to be as realistic and accurate as possible at scale, with some of the models even containing hundreds of people. So they really are a perfect fit for Google Street View and the service grants viewers a whole new perspective on the time slices and places that the models of Miniatur Wunderland have captured.
The images captured by Google’s teams in Hamburg may have been taken over a year ago, but they are still well worth a look. They showcase the attraction in a way that is not likely to be accessible from anywhere outside of Street View. They even manage to go beyond the perspective that can be gained by physically visiting Miniatur Wunderland. Anybody interested in checking out what was captured can check out the video and some of the images below or head over to the source link below for more information. Of course, there is a vast array of further scenes that can be explored via the Street View application, too.
