Zoom into Chiang Mai with New HD View Panoramas
We've added two HD View panoramas of Chiang Mai, the first high-resolution gigapixel panoramas ever taken of Chiang Mai. For the first image
we stitched over 300 images (taken on April 3, 2008) into one giant image that is almost 100,000 pixels wide and contains close to 1 Gigapixels (1000 Megapixels) in all. This giant image is streamed in small tiles for smooth performance.
Also, as this is our first attempt at creating such a huge image, the left side of the picture is somewhwat slanted. It's only about 4.5 degrees but the buildings are all leaning to the left a little which hampers the experience slightly. Still, it's fun exploring the image with pan and zoom (use your mouse wheel to zoom and mouse pointer to pan). Can you spot the landing plane (probably China Airlines from Taipeh)?
Weather permitting, we hope to create another image soon with a higher resolution camera and a wider field of view, and hopefully without "leaning towers of Chiang Mai".
You can zoom in with your mouse wheel amd move around with either the hand or navigator tools you select in the top-right corner of the screen.
For people not familiar with Chiang Mai:
- The leftmost part of the image shows the Chiang Mai branch of the Bank of Thailand (huge golden color roof).
- Zooming straight in will show Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai's most important temple and home of the city pillar. The reddish brick chedi spire has been destroyed in an earthquake a few hundred years ago.
- The large buiding with the bright red roof in the right back is the new Shangri-La Hotel Chiang Mai, left of which is the Night Bazaar area. The hotel is about 12 kilometers from the point where the panorama was photographed. The day one of the clearest in the last few months but haze is a problem with objects that are further away.
The second image was taken from the viewpoint on the way up Doi Suthep. Unfortunately trees block some of the right part of the panorama, but as the image is "closer to town" it has a higher resolution.
These images were experimental but the stitching went so well that it might be worth it to trek to a better vantage point on the mountain to get an unobstructed view of Chiang Mai.
Happy Zooming! And "Happy Songkran!"
Posted: April 13, 2008, 1 a.m. Thailand Time
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