# Global Structure-from-Motion Revisited

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20219 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20219/

## Key facts

- Cited by 218 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [Pixel-Perfect Structure-from-Motion with Featuremetric Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08291/) (2021)
- [MAGSAC++, a fast, reliable and accurate robust estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05909/) (2019)
- [Cameras as Rays: Pose Estimation via Ray Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14817/) (2024)
- [LaMAR: Benchmarking Localization and Mapping for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10770/) (2022)
- [Detector-Free Structure from Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15669/) (2023)
- [Shonan Rotation Averaging: Global Optimality by Surfing SO(p)n](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02737/) (2020)
- [Robust Camera Location Estimation by Convex Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.0165/) (2014)
- [NeuRoRA: Neural Robust Rotation Averaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04485/) (2019)
- [Doppelgangers: Learning to Disambiguate Images of Similar Structures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02420/) (2023)
- [Baseline Desensitizing In Translation Averaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00643/) (2019)
- [A Pose-only Solution to Visual Reconstruction and Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01530/) (2021)
- [Convex Relaxations for Pose Graph Optimization with Outliers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02112/) (2018)
- [Algebraic Characterization of Essential Matrices and Their Averaging in Multiview Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02663/) (2019)
- [Revisiting Rotation Averaging: Uncertainties and Robust Losses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05195/) (2023)
- [GPSfM: Global Projective SFM Using Algebraic Constraints on Multi-View Fundamental Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00426/) (2018)
- [Reducing Drift in Structure From Motion Using Extended Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12295/) (2020)
- [Linear Global Translation Estimation with Feature Tracks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.01832/) (2015)
- [Rotation Synchronization via Deep Matrix Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05268/) (2023)
- [Absolute Triangulation Algorithms for Space Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12197/) (2022)
- [On Computing the Translations Norm in the Epipolar Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03637/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 218)

- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10647/) (2025)
- [π3: Permutation-Equivariant Visual Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13347/) (2025)
- [MapAnything: Universal Feed-Forward Metric 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13414/) (2025)
- [ReCamMaster: Camera-Controlled Generative Rendering from A Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11647/) (2025)
- [3D Reconstruction with Spatial Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16061/) (2024)
- [MASt3R-SLAM: Real-Time Dense SLAM with 3D Reconstruction Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12392/) (2024)
- [ViPE: Video Pose Engine for 3D Geometric Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10934/) (2025)
- [VGGT-SLAM: Dense RGB SLAM Optimized on the SL(4) Manifold](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12549/) (2025)
- [GameFactory: Creating New Games with Generative Interactive Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08325/) (2025)
- [CamI2V: Camera-Controlled Image-to-Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15957/) (2024)
- [Aether: Geometric-Aware Unified World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18945/) (2025)
- [Easi3R: Estimating Disentangled Motion from DUSt3R Without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24391/) (2025)
- [MegaLoc: One Retrieval to Place Them All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17237/) (2025)
- [RealCam-I2V: Real-World Image-to-Video Generation with Interactive Complex Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10059/) (2025)
- [Light3R-SfM: Towards Feed-forward Structure-from-Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14914/) (2025)
- [FullDiT: Multi-Task Video Generative Foundation Model with Full Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19907/) (2025)
- [AerialMegaDepth: Learning Aerial-Ground Reconstruction and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13157/) (2025)
- [FloVD: Optical Flow Meets Video Diffusion Model for Enhanced Camera-Controlled Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08244/) (2025)
- [LingBot-Map: Geometric Context Transformer for Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14141/) (2026)
- [Scal3R: Scalable Test-Time Training for Large-Scale 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08542/) (2026)
- [Vid2Sim: Realistic and Interactive Simulation from Video for Urban Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06693/) (2025)
- [Uni4D: Unifying Visual Foundation Models for 4D Modeling from a Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21761/) (2025)
- [VGGT-SLAM 2.0: Real-time Dense Feed-forward Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19887/) (2026)
- [Dynamic Camera Poses and Where to Find Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17788/) (2025)
- [MP-SfM: Monocular Surface Priors for Robust Structure-from-Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20040/) (2025)
- [ZipMap: Linear-Time Stateful 3D Reconstruction via Test-Time Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04385/) (2026)
- [Block-Sparse Global Attention for Efficient Multi-View Geometry Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07120/) (2025)
- [SAIL-Recon: Large SfM by Augmenting Scene Regression with Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17972/) (2025)
- [AMB3R: Accurate Feed-forward Metric-scale 3D Reconstruction with Backend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20343/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recovering 3D structure and camera motion from images has been a long-standing focus of computer vision research and is known as Structure-from-Motion (SfM). Solutions to this problem are categorized into incremental and global approaches. Until now, the most popular systems follow the incremental paradigm due to its superior accuracy and robustness, while global approaches are drastically more scalable and efficient. With this work, we revisit the problem of global SfM and propose GLOMAP as a new general-purpose system that outperforms the state of the art in global SfM. In terms of accuracy and robustness, we achieve results on-par or superior to COLMAP, the most widely used incremental SfM, while being orders of magnitude faster. We share our system as an open-source implementation at {https://github.com/colmap/glomap}.