CPU-Only 3D Reconstruction of Lahore Heritage Site Yields 20x Point Cloud Improvement

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An intern at PreserveMy.World built a Structure-from-Motion pipeline using COLMAP to create a sparse 3D point cloud of the Moorcroft Pavilion at Shalimar Gardens, Lahore, without access to a CUDA-enabled GPU. An initial attempt using 43 broad Wikimedia images registered only 2 cameras and produced 42 usable 3D points due to insufficient visual overlap between shots. Switching to 15 tightly curated images of a single structure, with 60–80% overlap between consecutive frames, achieved 100% camera registration and 842 sparse points — a roughly 20-fold gain. The project demonstrates that meaningful heritage digitization is achievable on consumer hardware, provided the image capture strategy prioritizes overlap over coverage. PreserveMy.World aims to make 3D documentation of Pakistani cultural sites accessible to volunteers and students who lack high-end GPU equipment.

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