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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.
Does he mean it will also run on linux? I doubt it...
Sounds ... cheesy...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
"Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet."
Those zippy cool mac ads seemed to have hurt Microsoft's ego a little. maybe... maybe it's a ruse... a false modesty sort of thing...
i'm going to try it on my own shadow. result is a black ninja?
It does make them 3D (I remember seeing the video of the first demo last year I think it was). But it's not quite precise enough to be used for level design, or at least it wasn't back then. Still very cool though :)
which is totally what she said
From the site: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time.
No Linux support? In this day and age? Bah.
Doesn't work on my PC. Not even in FireFox.
Oh, wait, you misspelt 'Windows' as 'PC', an easy mistake to make.
Just in case you hadn't guess it was Windows only. It's from Microsoft and they care about making money, which they do a great job at. Linux and bug fixes do not make allot of cash for them, so don't expect to much support for either and don't whine about it. Thanks, so much. :)
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
While navigating a couple galleries... It feels like I'm drunk and forgot how to use a mouse.
Remember kids, set Graphic Acceleration to Full!
Minimum System Requirements
Important: Photosynth makes heavy use of your graphics hardware. If you have an older graphics system, Photosynth may not run. Also, Photosynth requires that your graphics acceleration be set to full.
Operating System: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time. Running Windows on a Mac? Photosynth runs under Boot Camp only. Parallels and other VM software cannot run the viewer.
Web Browser: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, and Firefox 3
Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB is recommended.
Graphics: Minimum 32MB of graphics memory required, 64MB or more is recommended. Photosynth runs on some DirectX6 capable cards and all DirectX7 cards.
NOTHING can replace Slashdot for that!
A bunch of nerds submitting their pictures of Tera Patrick in 5.. 4.. 3..
Actually. I'm going to go and try that.
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
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.
Actually it doesn't do this at all. Time to at least give Microsoft some credit here, it does a pretty decent job of figuring out the 3D layout of everything and allows you to move around as much as you like.
It's obviously not EXACTLY right (Although I'd bet that with more pictures, it's more accurate) but it's close enough that you could make a pretty good "virtual tour" of just about anywhere with nothing more than a bog-standard digital camera.
It's definitely impressive.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
From the sounds of it, this might be the next MS killer app.
I dunno about you guys, but I'm pretty stoked that this technology has come to see the light of day for people to input their own photos. It's like Google Street View, but with anywhere and any camera.
My main concern is that MSFT has stated that they'd love to basically stitch every photo together into a virtual world nearly (not quite, but close). I don't normally have privacy concerns and issues, but this 'could' potentially get a little funny. Do I really want to photosynth my apartment or desk at work and then have that linked locationally to the rest of the world? I'm not so sure.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Just messed around with it. Crashes Firefox regularly for me. Works for a bit and then crashes. I know I'm going to make some synths though pretty cool technology.
The short version: it's pretty fucking cool.
The long version: The first time I saw the demo of Photosynth I was blown away. The second viewing wasn't as exciting which tells me that it's the concept of connecting 2D photos to a 3D model that's really amazing, a spatial way to navigate disconnected 2D data.
blog
I could only see the one Flash demo which runs on their homepage but no other views work without Windows. Having seen that, it looks like they took existing techniques for stitching together pictures and added a dynamic capability to that. Cool but not really a brand new concept. Photo stitching software has been around for 10 or more years.
So they get 5 points for taking existing tech, making it look like a new web technology, and create another Windows-only technology in todays mix of browsers and computing devices. yawn.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I just uploaded a picture of Escher's Relativity, and broke Microsoft.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Do you not know people with moms? People's moms (never "people" themselves) love scrapbooking.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
So, anyone find it interesting that this is written in Flash and not Silverlight?
put it in the PC and rarely ever look at it again
A main reason for that is that most picture viewers suck quite a lot, they make photo viewing a chore instead of making it fun, since you either have to navigate manually from photo to photo or because you have to wait quite a while for the thumbnails to load, which then of course are not big enough to be of much use. When on the other side you have something like Surface or Photosynth where you can freely zoom in and out and navigate the photos in a quick and painless manner, things start to become fun and photobrowsing becomes more an activity like searching through a treasure trove then watching a boring slideshow. You of course still won't look at the photos every day, but with such software you can actually browse large collections of unsorted pictures and have fun doing so.