Crowdsourced 3D City

If a million monkeys typing can write Hamlet, can a million tourists’ snapshots map out a 3D picture of Rome?

The answer is yes. And Venice, too.

There are more than 2 million photos on Flickr tagged with Rome. They capture almost every nook and cranny, every column and doorway, of the old city. If you had a lot of computer power, and the right smart software, you could take these 2 million views and compile them into a single unified 3D portrait.

And if this system from the University of Washington GRAIL lab (http://grail.cs.washington.edu/rome/) worked for Rome you could take other highly photographed places, such as St Marks Plaza in Venice, and construct a visual 3D picture, down to the smallest detail.

Microsoft’s Photosynth accomplished a similar feat. The movie below does that same thing with huge piles of photos taken off of  Flickr.

Eventually, the every city in the world will get a full textured 3D view of itself. (via Waxy (http://waxy.org/links/))