Skip to content

Vertical short

Why flat is the trap

A vertical short of the Berlin Marathon course.

9:16

The Berlin Marathon course page

Short

Why flat is the trap

Why flat is the trap

Short · 9:16

Aerial imagery: Google Earth, and the imagery providers credited on screen in the film.

A course with no hills is a course with no feedback. Berlin’s boulevards are wide enough to run ten seconds a kilometre too fast without noticing, and nothing on the road says so until km 30.

Rendered from

The open data this film is built from.

4 of 4layers verified usable. Every layer below may enter a render.

Geodata layers used in our renders, with provider, role, resolution, licence, commercial-use state and the date each licence was last verified.
LayerRoleResolutionLicenceCommercial useVerified
Berlin LoD2 city model (LoD2-DE Berlin, CityGML)Geoportal Berlin / Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Bauen und Wohnen · CityBuildingsLoD2 - modelled roof forms, no facade textureDatenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)
Zero-2-0 waives attribution as a legal condition; we credit Geoportal Berlin anyway.The source CityGML carries no ParameterizedTexture at all - the buildings are untextured by design, which is why facades are procedural and the orthophoto is projected top-down only. Six 1 km tiles cover the Phase 1 scene block.
Cleared
Berlin true orthophoto 20 cm (truedop_2023)Geoportal Berlin · CityImagery20cm/pxDatenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)
Attribution is not a legal condition; we credit Geoportal Berlin anyway.This is the ground texture for every low pass: a true orthophoto, so building lean is already removed. It is projected top-down onto ground and roofs only; nadir imagery holds no facade data. The vintage is part of the layer rather than a detail of it. Berlin serves each flight as its own WMS layer, 2023 is the one every frame is drawn from, and it was chosen for the season: it is the only leaf-on flight, and the sun in the renders is solved against the light already baked into it. A later vintage is a different photograph of a different summer, so the credit names the year. Verified live against the service's own GetCapabilities on 2026-09-14: layer truedop_2023, titled 'Digitale farbige TrueOrthophotos 2023 (DOP20RGBI)', ows:Fees reading 'Für die Nutzung der Daten ist die Datenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 anzuwenden. Die Lizenz ist über https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/zero-2-0 abrufbar.' and access constraints 'Es gelten keine Zugriffsbeschränkungen.'
Cleared
ATKIS DGM1 - Digitales Geländemodell Berlin, 1 mGeoportal Berlin / Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung · CityTerrain1 m gridDatenlizenz Deutschland - Zero - Version 2.0 (dl-de/zero-2-0)
The reason a Berlin elevation profile is possible at all.This is a DGM, a bare-earth model, defined by its own abstract as excluding vegetation and buildings, where Copernicus GLO-30 is a DSM and carries every rooftop: sampled off that global model the same course reads 197 m of gain, most of it architecture. Sampled through the queryable layer c_dgm1, whose GetFeatureInfo returns a height in metres above NHN. Two things about the number that matter more than the source. Unsmoothed, even this bare-earth series sums to 115 m of gain at 50 m spacing, because at that spacing it is a picture of kerbs and ramps rather than of the ground, which is why the published 35.9 m is quoted with its 1 km smoothing window and its 200 m spacing. And a bare-earth model reads the ground UNDER a bridge, not the deck a runner is on, so canal and Spree crossings sit up to 5 m low in the raw series. Verified live against the service's own GetCapabilities on 2026-09-14: layer c_dgm1 served, ows:Fees naming dl-de/zero-2-0.
Cleared
OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap contributors / OpenStreetMap Foundation · GlobalVectorsvector, street levelOpen Database License 1.0 (ODbL)Attribution requiredShare-alike“(c) OpenStreetMap contributors”Explicitly commercial-friendly, which is why the shipped course line is OSM geometry rather than the organiser's GPX. Share-alike binds a derived database, not a rendered frame. Overpass returns HTTP 406 unless a User-Agent header is set. Cleared