Microsoft Releases Photosynth

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.

Comments

Re:Not actually 3D?

[Sir_Kurt]

You are so right about this. I was doing essentially the same thing in the 1980's while I was at MIT using a darkroom enlarger with a curved paper holder. I reasoned that if the distance from the focal plane of the enlarger lens matched the radius of curvature of my paper holder, the resulting print would be transformed from flat plane perspective to cylindrical perspective. I could snap a series of pictures by rotating a camera about the neutral axis of the lens, and then go into the darkroom and print using the curved paper holder. The resulting prints could then be taped together in a cylinder, and viewed as a seamless panorama.

I then built special cameras with curved film planes that did the same thing directly. Never bothered to update the technology for the digital age because "I been there done that"

But the concept is not new at all. No innovation here. Move along.

Kurt

Re:Not actually 3D?

[nschubach]

Why? I have yet to figure out who sits around on their PC/Surface/Etc and looks at pictures... Most people are happy with a simple slide show on their TV, digital picture frame or screen saver.

I just became an uncle again and my parents go stupid over pictures of the kid, yet they take the photo, put it in the PC and rarely ever look at it again until the screen saver kicks in. They don't sit around organizing and laying out the photos in any special way. At least not as much as these multi-touch and software packages make it out. You'd have to have no life or be a scrapbook-er to care about the photos like that, and [sarcasm]I'm sure we all know a billion people that scrapbook. [/sarcasm] I know one and I haven't talked to her in years.