We present a novel use of commodity graphics hardware that effectively combines a plane-sweeping algorithm with view synthesis for real-time, on-line 3D scene acquisition and view synthesis. Using real-time imagery from a few calibrated cameras, our method can generate new images from nearby viewpoints, estimate a dense depth map from the current viewpoint, or create a textured triangular mesh. We can do each of these without any prior geometric information or requiring any user interaction, in real time and on line. The heart of our method is to use programmable Pixel Shader technology to square intensity differences between reference image pixels, and then to choose final colors (or depths) that correspond to the minimum difference, i.e. the most consistent color.

In this paper we describe the method, place it in the context of related work in computer graphics and computer vision, and present some results.