An Infinite Number of 2nd Hit Videos

IEEE CG&A, March 1996 (Vol. 16, No. 2) pp. 22-30

Video Mosaics for Virtual Environments

Richard Szeliski

DOI Bookmark:
http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/38.486677

Abstract
This article presents automated techniques for creating large, high-resolution images and environment maps from regular low-resolution video and photographic imagery. By panning a camera over a scene and automatically compositing the resulting frames, this system can create images and panoramas of arbitrary shape and detail. Translating the camera causes motion parallax in the video, which can be exploited to recover depth maps of the scene and thereby enable limited 3D rendering through view interpolation. The article discusses applications of these techniques to the creation of novel virtual environments and experiences such as virtual travel, home walkthroughs, and home supermarket shopping.

I think this is related to (or a forerunner of) the type of technique they use for special effects in movies (e.g. The Matrix) where a shot is frozen, and then there is a "circular pan".

I have to wonder if they used this technique on 9/11-- that is what all those helicopters were doing: making a composite video scene of the WTC environment that can be used for the production of 2nd hit videos.

Hints of this sort of technique at play comes from this finding by Killtown (and here) as well as the recent work of BSRegistration.