These images are from another old project of mine (from 2005) where I built a little app that takes any image and converts it to a true 3D mesh based on the pixel intensity (essentially). Although I never integrated this into my final dissertation software system, I always found it really fun to play with. Once the image was converted it was fully navigable as a "terrain." The texture for the mesh could either be a fractal colored terrain based on the height of each pixel, OR a pixel from the original image. This required some clever texture sampling -- and the coolest part was that the app could export to .obj format so the whole thing was editable/viewable in your favorite 3D modelling package (like Maya or 3D Studio Max).