Arrive at the Gigapixel Photography Web site and you'll see a gorgeous photo of a dozen condominium towers stretched across the Vancouver skyline, yachts docked in the foreground, dusk bathing the scene in a rich blue hue.

After admiring the shot for a moment, play around with the buttons in the upper left-hand corner: zoom-in, zoom out; pan right, pan left. … Now really zoom in hard and give the page a few seconds to reload. Holy gigapixels, you're right in somebody's living room … or bedroom. (Fear not, it's all safe for work, near as I can tell.)

The company, located in Vancouver, explains the technology this way on its site: "A gigapixel image is a digital image composed of more than 1 billion pixels. It contains more than 150 times the detail captured by a typical 6-megapixel consumer camera.

"Gigapixel images are created by tiling a large number of photographs, or scanning a large film negative (8" x 10"). Gigapixel images are displayed online using streaming technology that breaks the image into small tiles and loads them as you look. This allows you to instantly view high-resolution images that are over several gigabytes in size.

"Gigapixel photographs are ideal for tourism, real-estate, architecture, medical imaging, archiving, and documenting special events. High-resolution images create the impression of 'being there' by immersing the viewer within the scene."

Not a word about voyeurism, but I'm guessing they spent many an hour scouring every lighted room on that photograph — there are hundreds — lest "being there" include capturing a Vancouverite (or two) in a compromising position. For example — hey, this is my job! — you might check out the room with the reddish light at the very top of the tallest tower on the right-hand side of the photo; zoom in all the way and you'll see a couple apparently … dining.

Google Street View has already blazed this trail, of course, but Gigapixel is taking it to new heights — literally.

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