3D photography visualisation and data acquisition

Question

Couple of years back, i remember seeing a demo on web from Microsoft (i think it was) which showed a web application which was displaying what i would describe as a "cloud" of terrestrial survey photos shown in 3D, where the user had an option (via UI) to quickly jump from one image to the other in 3d and while doing so, he basically moved through 3D space where images were positioned and rotated according to their real life locations. In order to jump from one image to the other, overlap was required. The example was for one building shot from multiple locations, but this was not your ordinary stereo photogrammetry, im guessing some form of ray intersecting concepts were indeed still used.

I'd like to know how is this application/context called, and if there are perhaps already tools available for data acquisition (vectorization) of objects in such 3D image "clouds".

UPDATE: Finally found what the app was: MIcrosoft Photosynth... Now... i wonder if there is something more advanced fro photogrammetric purposes perhaps? Check here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/solutions/photosynth.aspx

Answer 1

There is something better!

Check this out: http://www.123dapp.com/.

You can use 123Catch to combine many photo's into a 3D model. Then use 123Sculpt to make the model better!

Alternately, try this stuff for a home-made solution: http://www.visual-experiments.com/ the guy who put it together has gone to work with Microsoft, so he's doing good things!