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Comment by Datenstrom | Hacker News Reader

I hope someone did a 3D scan of the entire structure. Seems likely someone would have.

I don't know what the resolution was, but it looks like art historian Andrew Tallon has done laser scans of several dozen historic buildings, including Notre Dame: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150622-andrew-ta...

It is one of the most photographed landmarks in the world (with...billions(?) of pictures), so even without a proper 3D scan we probably could remodel the whole thing to an astounding precision.

Even if not, it is extensively photographed.

The Photosynth TED talk uses Notre Dame as an example of reconstructing geometry from a random selection of photos.

https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photos...

Skip to 3:45 or so.

Thanks. Now I'm sad and angry (again) about Photosynth being cancelled as well as sad and angry about Notre Dame!

Microsoft canned Photosynth and seemed to make very little effort to preserve all the content.

They canned it as a product, but the tech is still alive. You see echoes of it crop up in press releases every now and then.

This is the problem with these tech giants: they come up with cool stuff, and then abandon it because it isn't making enough money, but then they don't at least put it out there for other people to adopt.

Google is especially guilty of this.

The concepts behind Photosynth are alive and well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

Here's a detailed model of its entrance archway. Other models this detailed exist for some of the other parts as well.

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/portail-notre-dame-de-paris-...

That's a safe bet. And slightly related some of the coolest 3D Model kits ever, are made for the cathedral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nwEFCBLrdk

Its going to feel a little bit different building one of these now.

time for all our AI/ML to show it's prowess by reconstructing as much details as possible from all the pictures and remains..

Assassin's Creed Unity? Sorta kinda?

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