Can you solve the "Immersive Hotdog Problem"?

[GeoSquan]

http://lh5.google.com/sean.k.tallon/R3f2_FfpbZI/AAAAAAAAAg4/WjFvDftMygE/ImmersiveHotdog.jpg?imgmax=800


Imagine if you will, a long hotdog-shaped object lying on the Earth - about 100 feet wide, 100 feet tall, and about a mile long.

Now imagine that hotdog-shaped object is lying on the ground in GOOGLE Earth - and it is textured with real ground photography taken from the center of the hotdog.

To read more on this please head over to my blog (http://geosquan.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/can-you-solve-the-immersive-hotdog-problem/) and see more details and get the raw data if you'd like to try to solve this challenge!

Thanks!

Sean

[Forkboy2]

I'm thinking the technology for the average user (willing to spend a few $1,000 on equipment) to do this is still 5-10 years away. Google or Microsoft will probably have it in 3-5 years.

The hot dog analogy is not a very good one though because a long cylinder covered with textures doesn't solve the problem. You need either

A) Spherical photos taken every inch or so that automatically update at 10+ frames per second as your viewpoint moves down the road.

B) Some way to automatically create a 3D representation of the buildings by assigning every pixel in a photograph a latitude, longitude and altitude and then merging that data from a series of photographs.

C) ???

Either way, will be very cool technology.

Matt