Comment Re:Good Use for Importing Stationary Objects (Score 2, Informative) 136
I agree with you that 3D from uncalibrated images (which is basically what you're looking for) would have been cooler, but science is not quite there yet. Lots of research is done on autocalibration, and lots of research is done on reconstruction based on calibrated images (I've just finished a Master thesis in 3D vision on that topic :) ), but as far as I know no one has been able to put two and two together with convincing results yet. And even because something is stereoscopy-based doesn't mean it's worthless.
First, creating reliable stereoscopic depth maps is far from being a done deal. Researchers are still struggling with doing good stereoscopy in less-than-perfect conditions, like in presence of occlusion, specularities, large scale scenes, etc... (I'll point you to the Middlebury Stereo Page for an overview of current research in the domain).
But even if you can generate nice stereo depth maps, stitching them together to create a fully coherent 3D scene is a big challenge too. So no, unfortunately, 3D scenes from stereo is not a done deal.
First, creating reliable stereoscopic depth maps is far from being a done deal. Researchers are still struggling with doing good stereoscopy in less-than-perfect conditions, like in presence of occlusion, specularities, large scale scenes, etc... (I'll point you to the Middlebury Stereo Page for an overview of current research in the domain).
But even if you can generate nice stereo depth maps, stitching them together to create a fully coherent 3D scene is a big challenge too. So no, unfortunately, 3D scenes from stereo is not a done deal.
