I just saw this and I must say, it's pretty cool. My cousin mentioned it reminded him of running in old first person shooters (like Quake and Half-Life) and I must say, that is exactly what it looks like to me but with much better texturing of course.

 

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/

 

 

Wow, this is pretty awesome.  You're right about it looking like an old FPS;  they started heading up the mountain and my first thought was, "Hey, why isn't there a massive laser-rocket-machine gun bouncing around at the bottom of the screen?"

 

I think a lot of the FPS effect came from how they constructed the images.  In the middle of the video, the narrator talked about how the camera wasn't always centered on the path of motion, so they made a wireframe of the landscape and projected composite images on top of it. (2:40 and 4:00).  So, a lot of the periphery is actually rendered.  I think this would be why you get that FPS effect even more when the climbers go around corners.  If a person were doing this in real life, they would be looking straight ahead as they rounded corners, not keeping their eyes on the path of motion.  The camera frame would need to be tightened around these curves, and a lot of the inside corners would need rendering, as they weren't in the original frame.  So, you see the altered images for longer, and you also see the wireframes in motion, which makes the rendering more obvious. 

 

The more that I think about it, the more I realize that this is basically Quake (with better computers).  They're constructing a 3d environment out of 2d images;  they're just using actual photos instead of computer-generated backgrounds.

What a very interesting process showing much better results than a simple speed increase that is barely watchable. There are a few spots in the video such as the people walking right in front or moving about on the mountainside where you can see some of the transition between frames but the overall viewing experience was superb. Breakthroughs like this always amaze me even if some people may view them as insignificant. I can only imagine what other advances and ideas could come from this.