I'm afraid this Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) is a real thing in the industry now, and not going away.
It's even covered by the OGC [1], see their primer on the topic [2]
DARPA ARGIS-IS is already deployed to UAVs[3] and actually gives you video, not jaggy-looking stitched DOP slideshows [4]. it looks like DARPA is way ahead of Northrop Grumman which tries to get into that market with more traditional expensive optical hardware, compared to DARPA's cheap phone camera array, yet with inferior results.
It's even covered by the OGC [1], see their primer on the topic [2]
DARPA ARGIS-IS is already deployed to UAVs[3] and actually gives you video, not jaggy-looking stitched DOP slideshows [4]. it looks like DARPA is way ahead of Northrop Grumman which tries to get into that market with more traditional expensive optical hardware, compared to DARPA's cheap phone camera array, yet with inferior results.
[1] http://www.opengeospatial.org/node/1759
[2] https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=50485 [pdf]
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5129332
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA#t=120 [video]