Areograph is the commercial name of a photographic technology that assembles photographic components into 3-dimensional environments. Anywhere from 100,000 to several million photographs are stitched by software into a navigable scene, akin to those in a first person shooter. The production of such environments is both faster and cheaper than creating a rendered

Rendering (computer graphics)

Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...

 environment of similar size, as well as being more detailed, given that the source of an Areograph environment is a real-world location.

Drawbacks include the fact that the environment is fundamentally static, so must rely on modelled artefacts, as well as limitations to the resolution of individual photographic components.

The technology is currently used in the Casebook

Casebook: Episode 1 - Kidnapped

Casebook: Episode I - Kidnapped is the first episode of a computer game released by Clocktower Games, an independent game developer now called Areo. It is a forensic crime game, in which players explore crime scenes, hunt for evidence, and solve crimes...

series of games.