Systems and methods for generating time discrete 3D scenes

A system comprising:

• a computer network;
• one or more capture devices communicatively coupled with the computer network, wherein the one or more capture devices are positioned about a physical site and programed to acquire site data associated with two or more locations about the physical site;
• one or more computing devices communicatively coupled with the computer network and programed to (i) obtain the site data acquired by the one or more capture devices, wherein the site data comprises data sets corresponding to the two or more locations about the physical site, and each respective data set comprises (a) imaging data of the physical site, (b) coordinate data for the imaging data, and (c) time metadata for the imaging data, (ii) reconstruct a series of three dimensional (3D) modeled scenes of the physical site from the site data using the imaging data, the coordinate data, and the time metadata, wherein the one or more computing devices are programed to, for each one of the 3D modelled scenes reconstructed in the series, generate a respective 3D model, including textures for the respective 3D model, from source images that represent differing visual perspectives of the physical site, (iii) receive a request having associated position, orientation and time data, wherein the time data indicates a time period;
• and (iv) generate, in response to the request, output for display of a portion of the 3D modeled scenes to represent the physical site based on the position, orientation and time data associated with the request, wherein the portion of the 3D modeled scenes is determined by the time period indicated by the request.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium encoding instructions programmed to cause one or more hardware processors of one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising:

• obtaining site data captured by one or more capture devices, wherein the site data comprises data sets corresponding to one or more viewpoints of a physical site, and each respective data set comprises imaging data of the physical site and time metadata for the imaging data;
• reconstructing a series of three dimensional (3D) modeled scenes of the physical site, within a reference coordinate system for the physical site, using the imaging data and the time metadata, wherein the reconstructing comprises, for each one of the 3D modelled scenes in the series, generating a respective 3D model, including textures for the respective 3D model, from source images that represent differing visual perspectives of the physical site;
• obtaining two-dimensional (2D) image data of the physical site captured by a mobile device at the physical site;
• localizing the 2D image data by aligning the 2D image data with a reference 3D modeled scene from the series of 3D modeled scenes of the physical site, wherein the aligning comprises matching points in the 2D image data with the reference 3D modeled scene within the reference coordinate system;
• obtaining 3D information regarding the physical site and corresponding to the aligned 2D image data, the 3D information including information from the 3D modelled scenes in the series;
• and
• generating for display the 3D information within a context of the aligned 2D image data.