The project “Building Rome in a Day” reconstructs entire cities from crowdsourced photos, collecting millions of images uploaded to Flickr, computing viewpoints to build a 3D digital replica of Roma in one day.
What’s fascinating is that each photo, captured by different individuals, serves as a piece of a larger puzzle, where snapshots are added to the bigger picture, creating something far greater than the sum of parts. Cameras function as distributed storage units, each capturing a fragment of reality from a unique perspective.
Beyond just a snapshot of Rome, it is an ever-evolving mosaic that spans time. Photos serve as historical markers, and as more are added, the model creates a living timeline that bridges Rome’s past, present, and future.
Reference: [1]https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/rome/