A Live Motion Portable 3D Video Camera – Google Video

Skip ahead to about 17:45 and around 33:00 and 39:40 to see some cool results.

The implications are interesting, especially for Google Earth. It’s not clear to me that this is actual Google technology, though. People come in and do these brown bag presentations from all over. But the idea is that it wouldn’t take too long for Google to help improve this and start capturing real-world scenes to plug into GE.

There are advantages (mainly social) to Photosynth’s method, using tourist photos. But the disadvantages are that the photos won’t match. This approach could make a very high quality 3D snapshot in seconds.