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Photosynth Demo

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the wow-just-wow dept.

A couple of days ago Microsoft labs released a demo of their new Photosynth software on the web. Photosynth allows the aggregation of social picture networks (a la Flickr) into a completed image in addition to allowing a level of depth to image browsing previously unavailable. There is also a very impressive video of the demo available.

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Some impressive things by kiwicmc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unlike the first set of posters I managed to get over my self importance and watched a couple of seconds of BMW ads to see the actual video.

    I liked the initial viewing of large quantity of hi-res images and the smooth zoom. The aggregation of many thousand flickr images of the Notre Dame (including one of a poster on a wall) into a 3-D image was fantastic.

    C

  2. One step forward! by Sectrish · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At least now someone at Microsoft seems to know _what_ to buy, this is some pretty amazing technology. I just hope that someday it will be available to other OS'es too.

    1. Re:One step forward! by evohe80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One thing that amazes me of Microsoft is how, having so many bright people at MS reasearch, most of their stuff is so bad, and/or lacks innovation. (I know part of this came from some other company they bought, but some of it is original from MS, I've read a paper related to this technology).

      Every single paper I've seen from MS research is great. Well done!

      (from someone developing computer vision on linux)

  3. The Humane Environment by toQDuj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This zoom-ability of the first part has a lot in common with the ideas behind Jef Raskin's The Humane Environment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy/.

    The second part, however, shows marvellous stuff. Especially if what I think he did, was search for patterns in images, and compare those for unique objects to collect a library of images of a single object.

    This guy and supposedly his group shouldn't work for Microsoft in my opinion, but would perhaps feel more at home in a fundamental science laboratory. But I think my opinion on this is slightly partial.

    B.

    --
    Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
  4. Vast Desktop... by Slur · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, as I looked at the demo, I couldn't help feeling like all that virtual space was looking like a damn nice desktop environment. Nevermind the part of the demo with a flat-on scrolly-zoomy desktop, as nice as that would be (Seems obvious in a way too... And wouldn't it be nice if Leopard had that instead of "Spaces" ?). But imagine the notion of opening up an application and instead of just popping up a new window it creates a new space - within the desktop virtual space - and brings you into it. You can always pull back and move around to another window or workspace, but while in it you'd be totally immersed.

    I dunno, I just like the notion of immersive environments, especially for conceptual learning. I think we're going to see a prevalence of this kind of interface in the near future.

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media