3D Virtual Reconstructions From Microsoft

Lord Satri writes "New around the corner, Microsoft Live Labs' Photosynth, will 'take a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.' There's a demonstrational video and a 'smart photos' example page. From the site Very Spatial: 'The word is that Photosynth will be available for free, at least at first, but no word yet on an exact release date.' I must admit, seems like Photosynth may offer interesting features with an clean interface. This tool will directly compete with Stitcher, and to some extent, Google SketchUp. The virtual world reconstruction tools market is getting crowded, and competition is good. Microsoft doesn't yet have software to tie a photo library with Windows Live Local (Google does), but don't be surprised if it comes to life."

Comments

BBC has a speculated and stupid use.

[twitter]

of course the bbc reported this and asked the obvious question, "who will use this and why?" The answer was:

Dr Szeliski said:

1. "I think the photo-sharing websites will be early-adopters of this technology. "Wherever people share photos, instead of just seeing a gallery of unorganised photos, now you can pull everyone else's photos together and make a rational sense out of it."
2. The other obvious application, he added, would be for tourism and property, where a city could provide a virtual tour or a hotel could potential visitors walk through its lobby.

Use 1 is silly because the combination defeats the purpose of photo sharing. People mostly want to share pictures of their friends with their friends. Unless they have stone friends, those are not going to show up on the composite. They also want to share some unique perspective, which will obviously be lost as well.

Use 2 makes more sense but it's going to take much more work than first meets the eye for a real estate agent to turn a house into a virtual tour. Every surface will have to be photographed to make a gapless model and the program will need a lot of help constructing interior spaces. It might be cheaper and faster to borrow your architect's CAD model or make one.

Such tools will eventually become common, but M$ is neither the originator nor will they be the first to provide one that works well. They have yet to provide an OS that works well and should spend their effort their instead of trying to take over every photo album. Most people don't want their photo albums rendered into some kind of impersonal "rational sense" that looks like Hitler art, devoid of people.