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Microsoft Demos "Deep Zoom" Technology
Barence writes "Yesterday, during a presentation for this year's Imagine Cup, Microsoft's Mark Taylor demonstrated the company's Deep Zoom technology to appreciative gasps of admiration from the computing students present. It's pretty impressive stuff, and you can try 'deep zooming' for yourself at the Hard Rock Memorabilia Site." Unfortunately the demo requires the Silverlight plugin and the story is pretty thin on technical details. I would be interested to see how they captured the image data to that level without massive pixelation.
I would be interested to see how they captured the image data to that level without massive pixelation.
... you don't actually think that the image data came from one photo ... do you?
You don't
*slaps forehead*
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Unfortunately the demo requires the Silverlight plugin...
A Microsoft tech demo requires the installation of new Microsoft software to view? Who would have though?
While Silverlight might never be as widely-supported as Flash, I hope that perhaps the competition might force Adobe to do something about the CPU hog that is Flash.
But how is this different different from google maps (or live maps, or WHATEVER allows you to zoom out a lot)..
Don't we already have the ability to process multi-resolution images in, for example, Google Maps? You know, zooming in and out images with large total resolution?
It would be impressive if the photo they demonstrated on was anything but a photoshop, but given that the 428x134 signature is 52x11 in the 350x237 statuette picture which is 29x26 in the 428x350 hard rock picture which is 87x87 in the 428x399 stamp picture, for the stamp to be real would require a 33 gigapixel stamp (which, at 1 inch square, would be printed at 33,000,000,000 DPI).
To me zooming in and displaying a different image isn't really as exciting at the article author makes it sound? Maybe I'm missing something because the journalist sounds pretty damn excited about it.
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Deep Zoom works by letting you meld several images in such a way as pretend its one image.
That's still very useful.
Basically, its a con job of transitioning several different images, where one is a re-photograph of sub portion of the original.
'con job' has needless connotations of an intent to deceive.
The implication of the article is that this is all one image containing a nearly infinite level of detail, which it most emphatically is NOT.
No. The implication of the article is that you can provide this as a user interface, which is very cool. Google Earth isn't interesting because its a 'con job' to let us think we can zoom in and out of a single monster image of the planet. Its interesting because its a natural and convenient UI to use.
And we don't have to download every single pixel of every single higher res image of a tree in Nigeria to have a closeup look at a parking lot in London. Detail is loaded on the fly, as needed, while the user gets a 'seamless' and comparatively low bandwidth experience.
Its not particularly new as an idea. Or even as an implementation. But maybe Microsoft's tools make setting it up substantially easier, and that alone would be a nice bit of progress.
The author is probably equally impressed by street corner magic tricks.
I am impressed by street corner magicians too. Not because I think they're magical, but because I am impressed at their showmanship, sleight of hand, dexterity, and general ability to appear magical.
Kind of like how Google Maps will deliver a higher res map when you zoom in; but this is happening much faster.
Kind of like what happens when you use Google earth very close (i.e., in-situ) to where the servers with the data are stored.
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