你想象过电脑软件能把我们拍到的平面图像处理成具有空间感的3D画面吗？目前美国华盛顿大学和康奈尔大学的研究人员正在为实现这一目标研发新图像处理软件PhotoCity。

    Computer science researchers at the University of Washington and Cornell Unviersity are deploying a system called PhotoCity that blends teamwork and collaboration with powerful graphics algorithms to create three-dimensional renderings of buildings, neighborhoods and potentially even entire cities.

    The new system grew from the earlier work of a Cornell computer scientist, Noah Snavely, who developed a set of algorithms that generated three-dimensional models from unstructured collections of two-dimensional photos. 

    The original project was dubbed Photo Tourism and it has since been commercialized as Microsoft’s Photosynth service, making it possible for users to upload collections of photos that can be viewed in a quasi three-dimensional montage with an internet browser. 

    However, Photosynth collections are generally limited to dozens or hundreds of photos. The researchers wanted to push their technology to be able to handle tens of thousands or even millions of photos. They also wanted to use computer processing power to transform the photos into true three-dimensional images.