![]() Then I hopped over to Google's search engine and found out why. It looked like the sort of space housing companies would lap up, but no-one seemed interested in it. From above, you can see the metal scaffolding inside holding it all together, the roof long gone due to a fire two decades ago. It's an abandoned grain factory, built in 1857. I became fascinated by an old, grim factory on the border of Sneinton, called the Great Northern Warehouse. I’ve visited St John's Church, Colwick countless times, since. A derelict church was hunkered down just off of a road I’d walked along, missed many times thanks to the tree cover. I’d never have known had I not flown over it and been drawn in by the shapes and hues.Īs I was dragging my viewpoint over a park, I spotted a tower hidden in the trees. Not just the yellow splurges of industrial equipment, but it turned out there were vintage buses parked back there, awaiting another bride and groom to rent them. ![]() ![]() The collection of industrial units south of my house were bright and inviting. I’d find things from the air then head outside and look at them. I could read the graffiti on it (in the header image).įrom my Vive, I rediscovered where I had lived for three years. But once again Google Earth took my breath away. When I got there, in front of me was an ugly white monolith, the opposite of the Romanesque palace I’d just left. If you walk around Sneinton, you glimpse this grim block of flats in the gaps between houses as if you’re being tracked by it. I found a landmark I knew well, a derelict tower of flats atop a small hill, giving it just enough elevation to dominate the area. I moved to the small Nottingham suburb of Sneinton, where I lived at the time. I did.Īs charming as Southern Bavaria is, I wanted to experience something I knew in my bones. Things do lose cohesion closer to the ground, but from a bird’s-eye view you’d swear you were there. There are still messy splodges, but they come across like the paint strokes that make a larger picture rather than a limitation of the technology. It doesn’t go on forever, but it spreads out and creates a powerful sense of place. A few miles out of town, in the rolling fields, there are bushes modelled. You can see cars in the streets and trampolines in back gardens. There’s a little town called Hohenschwangau below the castle, and down there each house is individually modelled and textured. Don’t worry, she’s fine.Ī few years ago in Google Earth VR, everything looked like it had been left out in the sun for too long. For a brief moment, I was awash with a sensation that I was a giant and that I was in danger of damaging this delicate little scene beneath me. ![]() I swooped myself around, standing above the castle and mountainside. A road curved along the mountain, dipping in and out of view through the tree cover. A perfect, little castle nestled amidst the evergreens, towers and turrets modelled and textured. I’d expected a blob the shape of a loaf of bread with a scuzzy texture baked into it, but it was like looking at a doll's house. I gave an audible gasp as a perfect, fairytale castle, cupped in a tree-studded German mountain range, resolved in front of me. ![]() In my case, it was Neuschwanstein Castle. Google are smart: when you load in, you usually find yourself in front of something remarkable. I thought I was past that sort of technology-as-magic reaction, but since I tried out Google Earth VR on my Vive I've been shoving it on visitor's faces ever since. Your mum and dad would be amazed, and you would be lauded because you showed them their old shed viewed from a satellite on the same thing they use to look up recipes. There used to be a time when you could impress your family by loading up Google Maps, finding a childhood memory, and zooming in until it became a sort of pixellated memory lane. ![]()
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