PhotoCity is a game played outdoors, with any camera, even a cell-phone camera. By taking photos of buildings around your city or school campus, you can earn points, capture flags, and virtually own your favorite buildings, all while contributing to a large-scale 3D reconstruction!
More officially, PhotoCity is a product of collaboration between the University of Washington Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Cornell Department of Computer Science. The game uses our state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction algorithms to build 3D models. Our ultimate goal is to reconstruct the entire world, one photo at a time. The project has been made possible by generous grants from Intel Corporation and Google.
PhotoCity is Offline
In the mean time, check out what we've accomplished!
- Kathleen Tuite, Nadine Tabing, Dun-Yu Hsiao, Noah Snavely and Zoran Popović. PhotoCity: training experts at large-scale image acquisition through a competitive game. (CHI 2011)
- Kathleen Tuite, Noah Snavely, Dun-Yu Hsiao, Adam Smith and Zoran Popovic. Reconstructing the World in 3D: Bringing Games with a Purpose Outdoors. (Foundations of Digital Games 2010)
- New York Times: Computers Turn Flat Photos Into 3-D Buildings
- UW Daily: The world at your fingertips
- UW University Week: PhotoCity, virtual capture-the-flag, starting this week on UW campus
- PhotoCity maps during height of empire (UW, Cornell)
- Our YouTube channel
- PhotoCity research project page