There are over 196 countries in the world in varying regional settings. There are some of them who don’t even have a visible border like many European nations while others like North Korea and South Korea share a heavily guarded one lying on the 38th parallel. One that is even visible from a huge distance. All of these settings must reflect from the space at night when there is no other lighting source than electric lights. You can literally point out the main cities just by the intensity of light. But, wait a minute? This picture cannot be real as it shows big glowing spots of light where there aren’t even cities? What is this trickery?
This is actually an artificial rendering of a view from above by talented Russian artists named Anton Balazh from St. Petersburg in the outskirts of Moscow. Although it is inaccurate, it does give us a feeloing of serenity and wonder that is just not possible with the regular photographs. This is a real snap from above:
Looks less appealing than these pics taking the internet by storm, doesn’t it? Here are some of the most amazing pics ever altered to look as if from space. You will forget the Universal Studios’ preview after seeing this!
1. View of Europe
The beautiful view of Europe shows a mesmerizing collection of lights at dusk. But in reality it has clearly been toyed with to a great degree. Only the landscape is real.
2. Northern Europe
Never knew Northern Europe held such intricately placed cities to see from above! All fake people but good to look at nonetheless!
3. United Kingdom and Ireland
Nope. That’s not the UK or Ireland correctly depicted.
4. Not the Middle East
But look how quiet and peaceful it all appears. Perfectly hiding all the fighting within.
5. His landscape has 3-D views and even he has altered the basic topography for his advantage it seems. He didn’t make individual maps of regions. These pictures are from a big 3-D model of the Earth he made himself!
6. The view of his 3-D model of South East Asia
This area includes Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and many other countries.
7. Japan
Balazh had to work dedicatedly for several years to detail his rendering and make it complicated. This view from Japan shows it all. Look a the colors of the sea fading and getting stronger.
8. The Indian Ocean
He downloaded countless number of HD pictures from NASA to make the landforms look real because changing them wasn’t his part of the plan. He wanted to play with colors and 3-D appearances. Here is the view of the Indian Ocean with India and Sri Lanka shown here very prominently.
9. Island of Madagascar
The curious island of Madagascar has been shown to be void of much lights but it has played with its landscape very well showing its contrasting topography.
10. Coastlines
Just look at these accurate coastlines and the green water differing from the deep blue water.
11. South of South America
As shown in this pic, South of South America, he has lifted mountain ranges to become more visible than they are from space. They almost seem like protruding from the surface which tells us more about them if they had been flat. This can be considered a new technique for making Relief Maps as well.
12. He has also made use city light data from the NASA pics and rendered them further
13. These images are no walks in the park as a single one could take Blazh a month to prepare and then further attemps to perfect.
14. There are many ways to make it more appealing for the viewers he says. Changing and brightening lights, raising mountains from the floor and casting artificial shades of light on the surface as well.
15. Each image has 20-30 million polygons to form the much-detailed 3-D terrain.
16. The files are also very big at 5,000 x 5,0000 pixels and would require several high-end mobiles to be shown completely. It takes hours and hours of work on a powerful computer with 32 GB RAM to perfect his model.
17. He then sells his detailed images to stock image services for a hefty fee probably. Look at this view of the Eastern United States.
18. He has a great passion for vacations in deserted areas. This ingenious hobby allows him to earn enough money to undertake as many as he wants.
19. A view of Balazh’s Earth zoomed as far as possible!
Why people consider them real though?