radar.oreilly.com — Using technology similar to doppler radar, this live motion camera made by Advanced Scientific Concepts can translate what it shoots into 3D data. The result is that you can digitize anything you film into 3D data, complete with textures. Google seems to be involved with the project. Could VR walkthroughs be coming to Google Earth?
Aug 16, 2006 View in Crawl 4
brad3378Aug 17, 2006
Even if this isn't Google's project, I still think it's digg worthy because it is well known that Google is involved in lots of digitizing technologies like this. Google Maps, Google Earth, and The Google Book scanning project are a few that come to mind, and in fact, I just found this really cool website that I didn't even know existed: <a class="user" href="http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?tags=photo-textures">http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?tags=photo-textures</a>Apparently Google offers a free CAD program (and a $495 professional version). I'm pretty good at following this kind of stuff, so I'm surprised I didn't hear about it before.
klackAug 17, 2006
Some people like driving, and style, I don't think it will get that bad.
brad3378Aug 18, 2006
If you have links to something better, I would LOVE to see them.I gave this story a dig because I didn't know the technology was this good. Apparently there's even cooler stuff out there.
brad3378Aug 18, 2006
@thebltWhy would these need to be low poly models?Isn't the density of the surface a function of the optical zoom, distance to the object, and the megapixel rating of the camera? Are you suggesting that it isn't feasible or that it isn't possible? I'm not trying to sound like an assh**e, I just want to learn more about this subject.
thebltAug 23, 2006
I'm no expert in 3D modelling, only about 9 months experience, but this software is "guessing" the geometry based on some pretty cool technology. As I said, it would be a fun novelty to have. But as for a commercial game, one would be better off modelling the area by hand and possibly texturing it with the photos. I would HIGHLY doubt this would ever be used to produce a game. If you watch the GIF animation, you can see there's polygons scattered around the area.As far as practical uses go, I'm not really sure what this could be used for. Possibly educational purposes for, an example, doctors.But don't get me wrong, I love seeing this kind of stuff being developed. This technology in its current application may have no importance but it may find a new purpose later on.
mercury00Aug 25, 2006
"cyberdork A wild guess, you are not a computer scientist."A wild guess... you are not a cognitive scientist (cyberdork). My field is neuroscience and computer information science. If you somehow think these don't match, I've got a suprise for you. We do artificial intelligence using, guess what, human intelligence as our best example of what it should look like. If you are a computer scientist, you clearly have some learning to do in the field.