Have you checked out the Photosynth technology that Microsoft has been working on?
Microsoft Photosynth Website
The project takes photographs from many different photographers, but all from the same general geographic location and builds a 3-dimensional model of how the photographs relate to each other. The latest set they have released is of the Space Shuttle on the launch pad and in it's maintenance hanger. It is fun to fly around and check out the different angles of the same object that the project brings together.
There is some serious processing going on behind the scenes if you read about the technology on their website. Each photograph is processed and analyzed and unique details are found within the image. Those details are cataloged and compared to the other photographs in the collection. If the same unique details are found the images can be placed near one another in the 3-D model. The analysis also figures out camera angle and location in relation to all the other pictures. It's quite impressive.
Uses
So how could this be used? The most obvious would be to make an online repository for photographs from anyone that wanted to upload them. In time entire locations could be completely recreated in this virtual 3-D world, allowing anyone to click through and get an idea of what the place really looks like without having to travel there. Google Earth is doing a similar type of virtualization by allowing people to upload 3-D models of buildings. The Microsoft technology has the advantage of using actual photographs.
I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually are able to warp the images into actual 3-D models of the buildings being photographed.
For me this would be very interesting to use for residential real estate or virtual tour type applications. It would be quick and easy to take a bunch of photos of a location and then have then processed by Photosynth technology and be made available for online viewing. If the processing didn't take days this could be very cool.
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