What Middle-Earth Would Look Like From Space

[6Foot2]

Link: What Middle-Earth Would Look Like From Space | Co.Design | business + design

 

In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, British author J.R.R. Tolkien created a fantasy world called Middle-Earth for his dragons, elves, dwarves, and wizards to inhabit, but he only ever rendered it in text. Now, a team of Danish programmers is taking Tolkien’s descriptions of Middle-Earth and rendering it on computers, on a truly planetary scale.

 

The scale model is called the Middle-Earth Project, and it is so epic in scope that you can see the Eye of Sauron from space, yet so finely detailed that you could zoom from space right into Bilbo's Hobbit hole. It's all accomplished with Outerra, a middleware graphics engine that specializes in letting programmers model terrain, flora, and water using relatively sparse data sets through the use of fractals.

 

http://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/slideshow/2014/01/3025558-slide-s-middle-earth-13.jpg

[featured_spectre]

That is actually pretty cool

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Awesome!

[Staples69]

The word here is epic!

[Kiwi]

Very cool. I grew up in the real middle earth whilst it was all being filmed!

[Vasriel]

Awesome work

[janthony]

Absolutely love that!

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Forget how brilliant this is

 

Now... Where's my Skyrim Mod?

[6Foot2]

Another view on Middle Earth from above:

 

http://i.snag.gy/aDAaH.jpg

 

With labels:

 

http://i.snag.gy/mTnPR.jpg