CNET reports Google is now also getting imagery from inside buildings for its Google Earth application. The first building that has been turned into a gigapixel Google Earth layer is the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain:
The Prado Museum has become the first art gallery in the world to provide access to and navigation of its collection in Google Earth. Using Google Earth, art historians, students and tourists everywhere can zoom in on and explore the finer details of the artist's brushwork that can be easily missed at first glance.
The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels). With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (Las Tres Gracias), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (El Descendimiento ) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (El Jardin de las Delicias)
The Google Earth Prado layer also includes 3D models which allow you to fly around the Prado buildings to experience the museum as if you were actually there.