Yosemite National Park and xRez Studio have 20 photographic teams, each shooting more than 10,000 images, to create a huge panoramic view. With 45 gigapixels to play with, you can just keep clicking the + sign to zoom in for a closer view until you run out of resolution.
The display requires Microsoft Silverlight (Microsoft Research is involved in the project, which uses HD View), and even if you already have it, Yosemite probably wants a later version. It's easy to install but it does mean restarting your browser......
CEN Photography has an interview with Eric Hanson from xRez, who says:
A standard digital camera produces around 10 megapixels, but one of our images typically contains around 100-800 times that amount of resolution. We create these massive images by using a motion controlled camera rig, which can manage the fine precision and tedium required to shoot up to 800 individual, carefully overlapping images. The images are then stitched together using specialized software to consolidate the array of shots into a single image.
xRez has more panoramas, too.
