A method and device for the pictorial representation of space-related data, for example, geographical data of the earth. Such methods are used for visualising topographical or meteorological data in the form of weather maps or weather forecast films. Further fields of application are found in tourism, in traffic control, in navigation aids and also in studio technology. The space-related data, for example topography, actual cloud distribution, configurations of roads, rivers or frontiers, satellite images, actual temperatures, historical views, CAD-models, actual camera shots, are called up, stored or generated in a spatially distributed fashion. For a screen representation of a view of the object according to a field of view of a virtual observer, the required data are called up and shown only in the resolution required for each individual section of the image. The sub-division of the image into sections with different spatial resolutions is preferably effected according to the method of a binary or quadrant tree.