You might want to look into Field, which is an alternative (and open source) development environment…

http://openendedgroup.com/field/wiki/

…specifically because one of their projects ("Spatializing Photographic Archives") involves extending Field by implementing the same kinds of algorithms used by Photosynth…

http://www.openendedgroup.com/index.php/software/spatial/

…and – what do you know – there’s even a bridge between Field and Max:

http://openendedgroup.com/field/wiki/MaxPlugin

In fact, any curious Max user will probably want to check this out – there’s some amazing stuff there.

pH

Two points of clarification (I’m the ‘marc’ efe is referring to).

One) Field does in fact have a Max plugin — which lets you dynamically inject Python into Max/MXJ boxes. We think this is the greatest thing ever — but you should know that wrote it during our first 5 hours in Max using the free trial. Clearly we need some Max gurus to come over and make it real. If, instead, you are looking for something well tested and standalone, you should go to our inspirational source: http://www.loadbang.net/space/Software/net.loadbang.jython

Two) We do have an ongoing project to release a Photosynth-like environment inside Field, which exploits the original pioneering (and open source) work done at U of Washington. We’re still a couple of weeks away from anything resembling a release, but we are going to get there. It will be in Field but, of course, using the Max Plugin you’ll be able to drive it around from Max and/or look at our code.

Right now the Field’s Max Plugin is oriented towards letting you write and inject code from Field into a running max patch; that is Field->Max. Max->Field communication right now is basically OSC (in fact the plugin abuses a private OSC stream to do things like autocomplete). Field Beta 10 is going to have a little more to say about Max< ->Field data sharing than "Use OSC" (mainly because I find Max’s OSC support much harder than writing code). I also have a Field/Jitter example in my inbox that I should publicly document at some point.

As for running OpenCL inside the Max… I certainly haven’t done that, I don’t see why it can’t be done in principle and Field’s source code (and opencl library) is a fine place to start. I’ll keep my eye on it as the Max Plugin develops.

Marc