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Microsoft Releases Photosynth

Posted by kdawson on from the look-at-me-i'm-flying dept.

Spy Hunter writes "Photosynth has graduated from a 'tech preview' to a complete service. Now you can upload your own photos and have them automatically transformed into a 'synth': a 3D fly-through reconstruction of your home, your vacation, or anything else you can take pictures of. Learn more about Photosynth at the official blog, see what Walt Mossberg has to say about it, or just go try it out right now." According to Mossberg, Photosynth works on PCs using IE or Firefox, but not yet on Macs. We've been discussing Photosynth since its introduction.

2 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not actually 3D? by slim · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's what it does:

    Just like a typical panorama stitcher, it identifies similar points, then runs an optimisation algorithm in order to line those points up.

    Whereas a panorama stitcher warps the images to match a particular projection, and optimises the points in 2D, PhotoSynth optimises the points in 3D.

    The viewer application then lets you view the collection of photographs, as if they were hanging in 3D space -- in the right part of space -- and fade in and out of view as you stand in the right place to see them.

    For quite a small number of photos, you get a BIG cloud of control points, and the application lets you view that cloud and hides the photos. Often the result is quite a good 3D model - it's clear that if you were to draw vertices between them you'd get a decent wireframe of the subject.

    However, the application does not attempt to turn your photos into a convincing fully rendered 3D model. Rather it provides a spacial model for navigating between photos. It's always explicit that you are looking at one photo, with some other photos, dimmer, around it.

    I think that's quite nice - that it doesn't pretend to be more than it is.

    The slideshow option is rather neat. It simply steps through all the photos, but the transition between them shows you how they are spacially related.

  2. Re:Ego by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    Christ, they can't even do the standard browser ID string parsing ans see I'm running Linux? Fscking idiots.

    You have been trolled by Microsoft. You have lost. Have a nice day.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;