I recently learned about the Photogrammetry, it is the act of reconstructing 3D models from photos. This could potentially save 3D developpers a lot of time, let the computer allign the photos for you and generate the mesh. It is however not that simple, the mesh almost always contains holes and texturing is not perfect. This needs some cleaning up with other software (like blender, it is free). Another con is the number of polygons, most video game models have hundreds to a few thousand polygons. The scanned models can easily reach a few million! On the other side, the models are truely stunning. If you found this interesting I encourage you to read the following article. A game developper explains in a nutshell how Photogrammetry is used in the making of "the vanishing of ethan carter".
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
I truely believe this is the future for video games. When the software gets better, less work has to be done to fix up the model. And hardware will be vastly superior in the future, so your gpu will be more forgiving with the amount of polygons.
