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You're thinking of http://photosynth.net/. I put up a few sets back in 2008 and 2009.

It looks like they tuned it up a bit. The SR-71 at Smithsonian Dulles" set didn't work very well when I first put it up.

The "Downtown Los Angeles 11.20.2008" set is interesting. The hotel room kind of fades in and out because I moved around while I was shooting it.

They must have been very selective, or they did some extra processing, to make theirs look really good.

You're thinking of http://photosynth.net/. I put up a few sets back in 2008 and 2009.

It looks like they tuned it up a bit. The SR-71 at Smithsonian Dulles" set didn't work very well when I first put it up.

The "Downtown Los Angeles 11.20.2008" set is interesting. The hotel room kind of fades in and out because I moved around while I was shooting it.

They must have been very selective, or they did some extra processing, to make theirs look really good.

You're thinking of http://photosynth.net/. I put up a few sets back in 2008 and 2009.

It looks like they tuned it up a bit. The SR-71 at Smithsonian Dulles" set didn't work very well when I first put it up.

The "Downtown Los Angeles 11.20.2008" set is interesting. The hotel room kind of fades in and out because I moved around while I was shooting it.

They must have been very selective, or they did some extra processing, to make theirs look really good.

I guess it is the photosynth project. Apparently it became one silverlight demo only.

not that our devices embed information; but how that information is used. For example, having a geo location and serial number on every picture can aid in searching for images as well automating workflow (based on specific sensor characteristics). For me, that is good. Sending that info to the "mothership"" (sic), without my knowledge or permission, is bad because they have no reason to need that data; other than to sell it or use it for marketing.

No need to demonstrate the latest research

Photosynth

You'll be installing Microsoft Silverlight. It's small and fast.

Anybody got some pointers for FOSS photogrammetry systems?
goddamnit, can slashdot misinterpret allegedly valid html worse?

It sounds like classic security theatre to me. It has, somehow, become an article of faith in jackboot circles(the world over, apparently; our Limey friends on Airstrip One seem to be the most enthusiastic; but the notion is international in its appeal) that 'terrorists' simply cannot function without extremely high quality photographs, taken personally with professional grade equipment, even if their target is some tourist trap with 10+ million publicly available images on the web... It has further, somehow, become an article of faith(among both jackboots and photo-n00bs) that DLSRs are the magic ticket to being the next Ansel Adams, while anything without interchangeable lenses might as well be a webcam from 1993.

How exactly these beliefs persist, I'm not quite sure, when any moron who spends ten minutes in the camera aisle at Best Buy can see that contemporary happy-snapper gear is pretty competent(particularly when paired with contemporary flash memory that will give said happy-snapper 10,000 chances to get it right for under $40...) and trivially available stuff like Photosynth demonstrates the power of huge numbers of shoddy images combined with some algorithmic cleverness...

The obvious fact is, that Lord Bill's nightmare came true. He was afraid that web browser would make the operating system irrelevant, and that's exactly what happened. Think about it. When was the last time someone said, "Hey check this out! Go download this application..." Almost never. All the really exciting is happening on the web. That's because the web has matured to the point that developers are leveraging Internet scale data. Not only that, but web based apps are preferred by users because they work everywhere. I still use a standalone application for email, but I'm in the minority. This hasn't just made Microsoft unhip, but frankly irrelevant. As I told a friend of mine who said how he despised Microsoft, "Isn't hating Microsoft, a bit like still hating Prussia?" What does Microsoft have that's relevant? Sure they still have their Windows and Office, but that software is commodified. I can access the web with any OS, so Windows simply doesn't matter. With interoperability. no one really needs Office. For me, Apple's Pages and Numbers work pretty well, although I still prefer Excel for its ability to allow me to write custom functions (albeit in VB).

Now here's the irony, Microsoft Research is supercool. They do all sorts of groundbreaking stuff. Photosynth, Surface, along with work in collaboration and personal information management, just to name a few areas. MSR is great, and there really aren't that many places that do that work, let alone at with the both the breadth and depth of MSR. Microsoft doesn't really have too many peers in that respect, and that makes Microsoft very hip. Of course, MSR isn't for everyone, but for those people that like to do research, its great place to work.

I should have narrowed Seadragon to the Photosynth part of it.

You're completely ignoring the awesomeness that is Photosynth.

Article title is misleading. A bump-map is less exciting than converting 2D to 3D. It's not like it's going to build a perfect model of your head from 15 photos.

Photosynth is far more interesting if you're excited by this concept.

Yeah, I've noticed that Photosynth view is sometimes very reluctant or sluggish to give you a higher resolution. In a single synth, there will usually be some photos that get highest resolution right away, and others that will never ever go higher than a blurry blurb.

One time, on a certain photo, I noticed that if I resized the browser window to be a little smaller than full screen, the photo became instantly clear. But, as soon as I moved the window size bigger than some threshold, it went blurry again. The actual size of the photo changed with the browser resize, so maybe I was hitting a zoom level where it wanted to download a higher clarity version of the photo. But, why go back to clarity 0 while waiting for clarity 2 to download, when you have clarity 1 sitting there?

They have made the point cloud and quad (faded photos near the one you are currently focused on) better and faster recently. There was one synth that had well placed highlights, such that as the viewer went from one to another, the camera went through and displayed a bunch of photos on the way, so you could really get a feel of the layout and feel like you're walking through the place.

I've tried photosynth for several different things, just to play with it. Of course, I have to use it from a Windows machine, so my Linux machine is out.

    I recently took a panorama of photos of a friends pool area, where she has flowers around the whole thing (like a freakin' garden, just just the occasional flower). Here's the photosynth.

    I tried to follow their guidelines for "best practices". Every frame overlapped. From all four corners, I shot 180 degrees. I overlapped layers, so I could get views from down into the pool, to up into the sky.

    The result? Some overlapping frames that they were able to stitch together. There were a whole lot of orphaned pictures too.

    I tried to show it to someone, and the cells were pathetically slow to turn into full resolution. It wasn't a connection or a computer problem on their end. Eventually, they would, but it was far from a good panorama.

    I wanted to do a photosynth of the SR71 at the Smithsonian's new museum at Dulles. That turned out poorly, even with great overlapping photos. Here's the photosynth.

    I did have one turn out well. Here's the photosynth. I shot it from a hotel in Los Angeles, where I had a corner suite in a downtown hotel on a fairly high floor. A coworker had another corner room on the same floor, so I had maybe a 280 degree view. From the window, I shot a skyline layer, a mid-layer, and a street layer. I also followed taller buildings up. I then shot another set of pictures standing back in the room. It was kind of neat that you could pan through, and watch the walls and floors disappear sometimes.

    Microsoft Photosynth is far from prime time. Don't get your hopes up. In their original advertising, it was said to merge your photos with other people's photos, to get a better view of a setting. That simply doesn't happen. It fails to recognize a lot of matching photos in the same set. They may get it better, or they may drop it. Either way, I wouldn't hope for it to do something nice, like turn a set of photos from a street into a navigable streetview like Google Maps Streetview.

I've tried photosynth for several different things, just to play with it. Of course, I have to use it from a Windows machine, so my Linux machine is out.

    I recently took a panorama of photos of a friends pool area, where she has flowers around the whole thing (like a freakin' garden, just just the occasional flower). Here's the photosynth.

    I tried to follow their guidelines for "best practices". Every frame overlapped. From all four corners, I shot 180 degrees. I overlapped layers, so I could get views from down into the pool, to up into the sky.

    The result? Some overlapping frames that they were able to stitch together. There were a whole lot of orphaned pictures too.

    I tried to show it to someone, and the cells were pathetically slow to turn into full resolution. It wasn't a connection or a computer problem on their end. Eventually, they would, but it was far from a good panorama.

    I wanted to do a photosynth of the SR71 at the Smithsonian's new museum at Dulles. That turned out poorly, even with great overlapping photos. Here's the photosynth.

    I did have one turn out well. Here's the photosynth. I shot it from a hotel in Los Angeles, where I had a corner suite in a downtown hotel on a fairly high floor. A coworker had another corner room on the same floor, so I had maybe a 280 degree view. From the window, I shot a skyline layer, a mid-layer, and a street layer. I also followed taller buildings up. I then shot another set of pictures standing back in the room. It was kind of neat that you could pan through, and watch the walls and floors disappear sometimes.

    Microsoft Photosynth is far from prime time. Don't get your hopes up. In their original advertising, it was said to merge your photos with other people's photos, to get a better view of a setting. That simply doesn't happen. It fails to recognize a lot of matching photos in the same set. They may get it better, or they may drop it. Either way, I wouldn't hope for it to do something nice, like turn a set of photos from a street into a navigable streetview like Google Maps Streetview.

I've tried photosynth for several different things, just to play with it. Of course, I have to use it from a Windows machine, so my Linux machine is out.

    I recently took a panorama of photos of a friends pool area, where she has flowers around the whole thing (like a freakin' garden, just just the occasional flower). Here's the photosynth.

    I tried to follow their guidelines for "best practices". Every frame overlapped. From all four corners, I shot 180 degrees. I overlapped layers, so I could get views from down into the pool, to up into the sky.

    The result? Some overlapping frames that they were able to stitch together. There were a whole lot of orphaned pictures too.

    I tried to show it to someone, and the cells were pathetically slow to turn into full resolution. It wasn't a connection or a computer problem on their end. Eventually, they would, but it was far from a good panorama.

    I wanted to do a photosynth of the SR71 at the Smithsonian's new museum at Dulles. That turned out poorly, even with great overlapping photos. Here's the photosynth.

    I did have one turn out well. Here's the photosynth. I shot it from a hotel in Los Angeles, where I had a corner suite in a downtown hotel on a fairly high floor. A coworker had another corner room on the same floor, so I had maybe a 280 degree view. From the window, I shot a skyline layer, a mid-layer, and a street layer. I also followed taller buildings up. I then shot another set of pictures standing back in the room. It was kind of neat that you could pan through, and watch the walls and floors disappear sometimes.

    Microsoft Photosynth is far from prime time. Don't get your hopes up. In their original advertising, it was said to merge your photos with other people's photos, to get a better view of a setting. That simply doesn't happen. It fails to recognize a lot of matching photos in the same set. They may get it better, or they may drop it. Either way, I wouldn't hope for it to do something nice, like turn a set of photos from a street into a navigable streetview like Google Maps Streetview.

Purchase a GPS logger, carry it with you everywhere while you take pictures. Or even better, buy/rent a camera with GPS built in.

Next, upload your photos into Microsoft Photosynth. http://photosynth.net/

I've seen demos where it can synthesize multiple photos based on GPS data, and present them in a mapping mode where you can 'walk down the street' using your photos, and other people's photos from the area. Not sure what capabilities have been released in this regard, yet, to the general public.

It's easier to count the windows

I can't. That website requires Windows to count the windows.

Who would create an OS-specific site for simple image viewing/manipulation? Oh... it's in Microsoft's netblock. Surprise.

It's easier to count the windows.

I personally shot these photos. But hey, it could be disinformation. They wouldn't let me take it out for a test flight. We did notice that the engines were still in it, so it hasn't been completely sanitized as a museum piece, just put in air conditioned storage.

    I was considering how to taxi it out. They left too much stuff in the way, and I was short just about one ground crew to get it moving properly.

You might be interested to have a look at some software called ALE, which can be used to do this more or less automatically; you give it a sequence of frames and it'll synthesize a superresolution image combing data from every frame.

Sounds like the FOSS version of Photosynth.

Because Microsoft is playing nice with the new administration and getting a lot of free advertising to boot. Did you see the Photosynth stuff that CNN was drooling over during the festivities today> Yep, that's a Microsoft Labs product.

It's an advertising coup that bodes ill for open source in the new administration.

I believe you are thinking of a different Microsoft technology:

http://photosynth.net/

You can find a nice and synthy (98%!) of a hang gliding flight over yosemite valley here, http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=1a012e5b-f88f-481f-ab3e-98f32c36665e&i=0:0:42&z=480.75843599999996&g=0&p=0:0&m=false&c=2.59737:6.42424:-1.76969&d=-1.62289:-1.47831:-0.880891

I thought I would share.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=db981975-7b23-4c45-b27b-73d294ca76e7

Uncle Pete is still my favorite uncle.

The Problem is even Microsoft doesn't like their own Operating systems.

I just visited the new Microsoft Photosynth install page http://photosynth.net/install.aspx on my Mac and this was the message!!!

"Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows.
Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site."

If Microsoft want to change the perception that Vista is a dud they need to convince their own staff first. Messages like the one above reinforce the common belief that OSx is better.