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Microsoft Demos "Deep Zoom" Technology

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-interested-in-the-image-capture-and-storage dept.

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.

8 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Haven't you ever.. by katterjohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    seen CSI? This technology is so passe.

  2. oh lordy... by nuzak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would be interested to see how they captured the image data to that level without massive pixelation.

    You don't ... you don't actually think that the image data came from one photo ... do you?

    *slaps forehead*

    --
    Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
  3. Maybe not CSI by decowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But how is this different different from google maps (or live maps, or WHATEVER allows you to zoom out a lot)..

    1. Re:Maybe not CSI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      A major difference is the inclusion high resolution collections, which are not fixed at runtime and can be rearranged programmatically. I know this because that is what we did on the Hard Rock Memorabilia project.

      Aside from that, it is another form of a "tile server" application... Just one that happens to be rather easy to use from a development perspective, and one that has been done really well (Zoomify/AJAX-based solutions don't hold a candle to the tile stitching and easing effects built into the MultiScaleImage control, IMHO).

  4. SeaDragon by Dragonshed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Silverlight's MultiScaleImage control (aka deep zoom) is a version of the SeaDragon renderer. The image format it uses is a custom tree structure that contains pixel details relevant to both it's position in the tree and relative to it's peers. Essentially, it's a hierarchical image with very smooth transitions.

    Silverlight: silverlight.net
    SeaDragon: http://labs.live.com/seadragon.aspx

  5. WTF? by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're like me and a bunch of very smart students, you can't fail to be impressed. I must be dumb.... Stiching together an image of higher-res photos might be a technical wow, but sorry, I'm not really impressed. This sort of thing I might expect from a college lab, but for a multi-billion dollar company to present this as some sort of earth-shaking innovation?

  6. Re:This is not new... by iang · · Score: 5, Informative

    Typical Slashdot... they post a snarky anti-Microsoft comment with a pretentious air of superiority but get the details wrong.

    Photosynth is not Deep Zoomm. Photosynth reconstructs 3D models from collections of 2D photos of the scene acquired from different positions and angles. And as far as I know, Photosynth wasn't an acquisition - it was produced by Microsoft Research.

    Deep Zoom was an acquisition, but it was the technology formerly known as Seadragon. It's completely unrelated - Deep Zoom/Seadragon is a 2D thing.

    And it's an acquisition, but so what? Ooh, naughty Microsoft - how dare they take exciting technology developed by a startup and put it in the hands of millions of users? Shocking! Clearly it they should have left it to sink in obscurity.

    --
    Ian Griffiths
  7. Re:No free lunch by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.