Hamburg in 3-D

The construction workers and craftsmen who erected Hamburg's opera house in the 1670s or its National Theater in the 1760s never could have imagined that, several centuries later, Internet users in San Francisco, Sydney or New Delhi would be able to view their handiwork from the comfort of their homes and offices.

Thanks to a cooperative project between Google and Hamburg@work, an initiative that networks public and private members of the media, information technology and telecommunications branches, visitors to the Google Earth Web site will soon be able to take a virtual three-dimensional tour of the northern Germany city.

Up close and personal

So far, only American cities have been available in 3-D format at Google Earth. Not only is Hamburg the first European city to be added to the Website in 3-D, its virtual map also represents a technical advancement.

"By showing the texture on the buildings' facades, Hamburg is worldwide the first city to be available in such great detail," Google spokesman Stefan Keuchel told reporters Wednesday in Hamburg.

In the existing 3-D models, only notable landmarks have been shown in detail, while the other buildings appear on the screen as white blocks. Hamburg will be different.

"The Internet user can view buildings from a virtual distance of up to 30 centimeters (one foot)," Stefan Klein from Hamburg@work told reporters Wednesday. Due to the added dimension, the buildings can be circled and seen from every angle.

Angled photos allow for detailed facades

The Swiss-based company Cybercity, which was responsible for the technical aspects of the project, took 500 aerial photographs taken at an angle from 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). These were then used to digitally extrapolate the building facade in detail.

Cybercity developed the software that is capable of undoing the distortion inherent to the diagonal aerial photos and transferring the images to the 3-D model, Michael Schulze-Horsel from Cybercity told DW-WORLD.DE.

No one has disclosed exactly when the 3-D tour of Hamburg will be accessible online. But organizers said that, when it is finally released, they expect it to be particularly useful for tourists and for small businesses to market themselves.